[Tex/LaTex] Overfull hbox in description environment

descriptionline-breaking

I have a problem with description environment. The text exceeds the width of the page

\documentclass[a4paper,twoside,10pt]{report}
\usepackage[francais]{babel} 
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[ansinew]{inputenc}
\usepackage{lmodern} 
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{hmargin=2.5cm,vmargin=2.5cm}
\begin{document}
\pagestyle{empty} 
\chapter{Some small hints}\label{hints}
\section{German Umlauts and other Language Specific Characters}\label{umlauts}
You can type german umlauts like 'ä', 'ö', or 'ü' directly in this file.
\begin{description}
\item [small item:] Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
\item [Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse consequat   accumsan sodales. Duis pulvinar sagittis porta. Mauris malesuada vehicula turpis,] sed ornare ante. In pulvinar ligula a leo lacinia, vel laoreet tortor auctor. Nullam in tinc] Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
\end{description}
\end{document}

this is the output : enter image description here

Is there a solution to ensure that the text goes to a new line automatically ? thanks

Best Answer

You can do that withsameline option from the enumitem package. Incidentally, I changed the input enncoding to utf8, as it is more portable to another platform:

\documentclass[a4paper,twoside,10pt]{report}
\usepackage[francais]{babel}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{margin=2.5cm, showframe, nomarginpar}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\AtBeginDocument{\def\chaptername{Le Chapter}}

enter image description here

\begin{document}
\pagestyle{empty}
\chapter{Some small hints}\label{hints}
\section{German Umlauts and other Language Specific Characters}\label{umlauts}
You can type german umlauts like 'ä', 'ö', or 'ü' directly in this file.

\begin{description}[style =sameline]
\item [small item:] Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

\item [Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse consequat accumsan sodales. Duis pulvinar sagittis porta. Mauris malesuada vehicula turpis,] sed ornare ante. In pulvinar ligula a leo lacinia, vel laoreet tortor auctor. Nullam in tinc]
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
\end{description}
\end{document}

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] \texttt overfull hbox problem

Informally speaking, TeX break lines at spaces (and a few other positions in a word, called "discretionary break"). Discretionary break is not allowed in typewriter typesetting. If there is no space in \texttt{}, it cannot break.

For your example, there is no help using \texttt instead of \verb. There are several ways to solve such kind of problem:

Enable microtype for pdfTeX (suggested):
```
\usepackage{microtype}
```
Enable hythenation of TT text:
```
\usepackage[htt]{hyphenat}
```

Use a sloppy paragraph:

\sloppy

\begin{sloppypar}
The entry point is...
\end{sloppypar}

This may cause bad spacing.

Enable break manually:
```
\texttt{Work\allowbreak flow}
```
This is not useful here, but may be useful for \texttt{TRCS.\allowbreak Main()}

[Tex/LaTex] Wrong line break in description environment after a long label

You've found a very unfortunate combination: there's no possibility to hyphenate "text" and breaking the line after "A" would make the line underfull.

A reason for this is that the text in the description label is typeset in a box, so it doesn't participate in the possible stretching of spaces to justify the line.

With the enumitem package we can change this behavior, by "unboxing" the label. Such an adjustment is not necessary (neither desirable) if the label is short; when it's very long it may be.

If you say

\documentclass[BCOR=15mm]{scrbook}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\begin{document}

\chapter{Issues with descriptions}

\begin{description}[style=unboxed]
\item[A normal label.] A text with short words, nicely wrapped. One two
three four five six seven eight nine ten.
\item[A very long label that is almost as long as the text width, but not quite.] A text
with short words, not so nicely wrapped. One two three four five six
seven eight nine ten.
\end{description}

\end{document}

then the label text will participate in the distribution of spaces in the line and the overfull problem will disappear.

enter image description here

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] \texttt overfull hbox problem

[Tex/LaTex] Wrong line break in description environment after a long label

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