[Tex/LaTex] How to put a paragraph in a box that is some percentage of the width of the page I’m putting it in

boxesmarginsminipage

I have a document that should contain a bordered box with a paragraph of explanatory text. The box's width should be a percentage of that of the page's body.

I don't want to make the box a fixed width, because I will be making the document in two page sizes. I hope I'll only need to change the documentclass property, and to that end I hope it's possible to make the box width proportional to the page (or body) so that its width will make sense at both sizes.

I tried using \framebox but I don't seem to be understanding it properly — I can't get the text in the framebox to wrap.

I suppose I could make a one-celled table, but it seems like I'm missing a more elegant solution.

Best Answer

You can use a minipage with the width as a proportion of textwidth.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\fbox{\begin{minipage}{0.9\textwidth}
\lipsum[1]
\end{minipage}}
\end{document}

The \begin{minipage}...\end{minipage} puts a block of text in its own block. The 0.9\textwidth provides the sizing parameter.

To enclose everything in a frame you can use \fbox.

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