An Example Of The Usage Tufte Handout Style Instructions
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An Example of the Usage of the Tufte-Handout Style11Inspired by Edward R. Tufte!
The Tufte-L
A
T
EX Developers
24 January 2009
This document describes the Tufte handout L
A
T
EX document style. It
also provides examples and comments on the style’s use. Only a brief
overview is presented here; for a complete reference, see the sample
book.
The Tufte-L
A
T
EX document classes define a style similar to the style
Edward Tufte uses in his books and handouts. Tufte’s style is known
for its extensive use of sidenotes, tight integration of graphics with
text, and well-set typography. This document aims to be at once a
demonstration of the features of the Tufte-L
A
T
EX document classes
and a style guide to their use.
Page Layout
Headings
This style provides a- and b-heads (that is, \section and \subsection),
demonstrated above.
The Tufte-L
A
T
EX classes will emit an error if you try to use
\subsubsection and smaller headings.
In his later books,2Tufte starts each section with a bit of vertical 2Edward R. Tufte. Beautiful Evidence.
Graphics Press, LLC, first edition, May
2006. ISBN 0-9613921-7-7
space, a non-indented paragraph, and sets the first few words of the
sentence in small caps. To accomplish this using this style, use the
\newthought command:
\newthought{In his later books}, Tufte starts...
Sidenotes
One of the most prominent and distinctive features of this style is
the extensive use of sidenotes. There is a wide margin to provide
ample room for sidenotes and small figures. Any \footnotes will au-
tomatically be converted to sidenotes.3If you’d like to place ancillary 3This is a sidenote that was entered
using the \footnote command.
information in the margin without the sidenote mark (the superscript
number), you can use the \marginnote command. This is a margin note. Notice that there
isn’t a number preceding the note, and
there is no number in the main text
where this note was written.
The specification of the \sidenote command is:
\sidenote[hnumberi][hoffseti]{Sidenote text.}
Both the hnumberiand hoffsetiarguments are optional. If you pro-
vide a hnumberiargument, then that number will be used as the
an example of the usage of the tufte-handout style 2
sidenote number. It will change of the number of the current side-
note only and will not affect the numbering sequence of subsequent
sidenotes.
Sometimes a sidenote may run over the top of other text or graph-
ics in the margin space. If this happens, you can adjust the vertical
position of the sidenote by providing a dimension in the hoffsetiargu-
ment. Some examples of valid dimensions are:
1.0in 2.54cm 254mm 6\baselineskip
If the dimension is positive it will push the sidenote down the page;
if the dimension is negative, it will move the sidenote up the page.
While both the hnumberiand hoffsetiarguments are optional, they
must be provided in order. To adjust the vertical position of the side-
note while leaving the sidenote number alone, use the following
syntax:
\sidenote[][hoffseti]{Sidenote text.}
The empty brackets tell the \sidenote command to use the default
sidenote number.
If you only want to change the sidenote number, however, you may
completely omit the hoffsetiargument:
\sidenote[hnumberi]{Sidenote text.}
The \marginnote command has a similar offset argument:
\marginnote[hoffseti]{Margin note text.}
References
References are placed alongside their citations as sidenotes, as well.
This can be accomplished using the normal \cite command.44The first paragraph of this document
includes a citation.
The complete list of references may also be printed automatically
by using the \bibliography command. (See the end of this document
for an example.) If you do not want to print a bibliography at the end
of your document, use the \nobibliography command in its place.
To enter multiple citations at one location,5you can provide a list 5Edward R. Tufte. Beautiful Evidence.
Graphics Press, LLC, first edition,
May 2006. ISBN 0-9613921-7-7; and
Edward R. Tufte. Envisioning Infor-
mation. Graphics Press, Cheshire,
Connecticut, 1990. ISBN 0-9613921-1-8
of keys separated by commas and the same optional vertical offset
argument: \cite{Tufte2006,Tufte1990}.
\cite[hoffseti]{bibkey1,bibkey2,. . . }
Figures and Tables
Images and graphics play an integral role in Tufte’s work. In addition
to the standard figure and tabular environments, this style provides
special figure and table environments for full-width floats.
an example of the usage of the tufte-handout style 3
Full page–width figures and tables may be placed in figure* or
table* environments. To place figures or tables in the margin, use the
marginfigure or margintable environments as follows (see figure 1):
−1
0
1
x
−101
y
1
2
3
z
Figure 1: This is a margin figure. The
helix is defined by x=cos(2πz),
y=sin(2πz), and z= [0, 2.7]. The
figure was drawn using Asymptote
(http://asymptote.sf.net/).
\begin{marginfigure}
\includegraphics{helix}
\caption{This is a margin figure.}
\end{marginfigure}
The marginfigure and margintable environments accept an optional
parameter hoffsetithat adjusts the vertical position of the figure or
table. See the “Sidenotes” section above for examples. The specifica-
tions are:
\begin{marginfigure}[hoffseti]
...
\end{marginfigure}
\begin{margintable}[hoffseti]
...
\end{margintable}
Figure 2is an example of the figure*environment and figure 3is
an example of the normal figure environment.
x
y
Figure 2: This graph shows y=sin x
from about x= [−10, 10].Notice that this
figure takes up the full page width.
n=1n=2n=3n=4n=5
Figure 3: Hilbert curves of various
degrees n.Notice that this figure only
takes up the main textblock width.
Table 1shows table created with the booktabs package. Notice the
lack of vertical rules—they serve only to clutter the table’s data.
Full-width text blocks
In addition to the new float types, there is a fullwidth environment that
stretches across the main text block and the sidenotes area.
an example of the usage of the tufte-handout style 4
Margin Length
Paper width 81
/2inches
Paper height 11 inches
Textblock width 61
/2inches
Textblock/sidenote gutter 3
/8inches
Sidenote width 2 inches
Table 1: Here are the dimensions of
the various margins used in the Tufte-
handout class.
\begin{fullwidth}
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...
\end{fullwidth}
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ut purus elit, vestibulum ut, placerat ac, adipiscing vitae, felis. Curabitur
dictum gravida mauris. Nam arcu libero, nonummy eget, consectetuer id, vulputate a, magna. Donec vehicula augue eu neque.
Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Mauris ut leo. Cras viverra metus
rhoncus sem. Nulla et lectus vestibulum urna fringilla ultrices. Phasellus eu tellus sit amet tortor gravida placerat. Integer sapien
est, iaculis in, pretium quis, viverra ac, nunc. Praesent eget sem vel leo ultrices bibendum. Aenean faucibus. Morbi dolor nulla,
malesuada eu, pulvinar at, mollis ac, nulla. Curabitur auctor semper nulla. Donec varius orci eget risus. Duis nibh mi, congue eu,
accumsan eleifend, sagittis quis, diam. Duis eget orci sit amet orci dignissim rutrum.
Typography
Typefaces
If the Palatino, Helvetica, and Bera Mono typefaces are installed, this
style will use them automatically. Otherwise, we’ll fall back on the
Computer Modern typefaces.
Letterspacing
This document class includes two new commands and some im-
provements on existing commands for letterspacing.
When setting strings of A L L C A P S or small caps, the letter-
spacing—that is, the spacing between the letters—should be in-
creased slightly.6The \allcaps command has proper letterspacing 6Robert Bringhurst. The Elements of
Typography. Hartley & Marks, 3.1
edition, 2005. ISBN 0-88179-205-5
for strings of F U L L C A P I T A L L E T T E R S, and the \smallcaps
command has letterspacing for small capital letters. These
commands will also automatically convert the case of the text to
upper- or lowercase, respectively.
The \textsc command has also been redefined to include let-
terspacing. The case of the \textsc argument is left as is, however.
This allows one to use both uppercase and lowercase letters: The
Initial Letters OfThe Words InThis Sentence Are Capi-
talized.
an example of the usage of the tufte-handout style 5
Installation
To install the Tufte-L
A
T
EX classes, simply drop the following files into
the same directory as your .tex file:
tufte-common.def
tufte-handout.cls
tufte-book.cls
More Documentation
For more documentation on the Tufte-L
A
T
EX document classes (includ-
ing commands not mentioned in this handout), please see the sample
book.
Support
The website for the Tufte-L
A
T
EX packages is located at http://code.
google.com/p/tufte-latex/. On our website, you’ll find links to our
svn repository, mailing lists, bug tracker, and documentation.
References
Robert Bringhurst. The Elements of Typography. Hartley & Marks, 3.1
edition, 2005. ISBN 0-88179-205-5.
Edward R. Tufte. Envisioning Information. Graphics Press, Cheshire,
Connecticut, 1990. ISBN 0-9613921-1-8.
Edward R. Tufte. Beautiful Evidence. Graphics Press, LLC, first edition,
May 2006. ISBN 0-9613921-7-7.
