horizontal alignmentminipage
I cannot place my plot centered on the page. I tried the following code:
\begin{figure}[ht]
\begin{center}
\begin{minipage}{\columnwidth}
\includegraphics[width=5in]{plot1.pdf}
\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}{\columnwidth}
\includegraphics[width=5in]{plot2.pdf}
\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}{\columnwidth}
\includegraphics[width=5in]{plot3.pdf}
\end{minipage}
\caption{xxx}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
As one can recognize, the plot is not centered. Waht should I do to get it centered?
Footnotes within minipage environments are printed with small letters. The definition in latex.ltx is
\def\thempfootnote{{\itshape\@alph\c@mpfootnote}}
You could redefine it. A quick way would be:
\let\thempfootnote\thefootnote
Afterwards the footnote symbols within a minipage will be an arabic number as well.
I would use a single figure environment, start the adjustwidth environment inside the figure environment, and use two minipage environments, side by side, to display the two images; each can be given its own \caption. (The frame lines in the screenshot depict the ordinary page margins.)
\documentclass[letterpaper,11pt]{article}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx} % omit 'demo' option in real doc
\usepackage[space]{grffile} % for filenames with spaces
\usepackage{float}
\usepackage{chngpage}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{calc}
\usepackage[showframe]{geometry} % omit 'showframe' option in real doc
\begin{document}
\begin{figure}[ht!]
\begin{adjustwidth}{-1.25cm}{-1.25cm} % choose margin adjustments
\begin{minipage}{0.48\linewidth}
\caption{Schooling Time Shares}
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Schooling Time Share over Time.png}
\end{minipage}
\hspace*{\fill} % spread out the two minipages
\begin{minipage}{0.48\linewidth}
\caption{Training Time Shares}
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Training Time Share over Time.png}
\end{minipage}
\end{adjustwidth}
\end{figure}
\end{document}
Addendum: You mention in a comment that you weren't sure whether you should use subfigures. That decision depends mostly on how the two images are related to each other. If they're not particularly related, it makes sense to assign separate, figure-level captions to them. If, on the other hand, they're related quite closely, it's probably a good idea to treat them as subfigures. Fortunately, it's not hard to do so: (i) load the subcaption package instead of (or in addition to) the caption package, (ii) replace minipage with subfigure (four instances), and (iii) provide a new \caption statement for the overall figure. The earlier captions, previously numbered 1 and 2, will now be labeled (a) and (b).
\documentclass[letterpaper,11pt]{article}
\usepackage[demo]{graphicx} % omit 'demo' option in real doc
\usepackage[space]{grffile} % for filenames with spaces
\usepackage{float}
\usepackage{chngpage}
\usepackage{subcaption}
\usepackage{calc}
\usepackage{geometry}
\begin{document}
\begin{figure}[ht!]
\caption{Two Types of Time Shares}
\begin{adjustwidth}{-1.25cm}{-1.25cm} % choose margin adjustments
\begin{subfigure}{0.48\linewidth}
\caption{Schooling Time Shares}
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Schooling Time Share over Time.png}
\end{subfigure}
\hspace*{\fill} % spread out the two minipages
\begin{subfigure}{0.48\linewidth}
\caption{Training Time Shares}
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Training Time Share over Time.png}
\end{subfigure}
\end{adjustwidth}
\end{figure}
\end{document}
Best Answer
The comments above tell you what to do, the reason that what you did did not do anything is that you were centering the minipages but they were full width already so centering (or flush left or right) does nothing as a full width box is already "centred".
Within the minipage the settings are restored closer to default page settings, so if you want to centre the image inside a minipage the
\centeringcommand needs to be inside eachminipage. But here, you can simply delete the minipages and allow the outer\centeringto affect the included graphics directly.