[Tex/LaTex] Starting text a set distance from the margin

indentationspacing

I want to break some lines in a document into 3 sections such that the first letter of each section is always directly below the other, slightly like a table, but I don't want to use the table environnment.

My current code is:

  \documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{scrreprt}
  \pagenumbering{gobble}
  \usepackage[english]{babel}
  \linespread{1.25}
  \usepackage[top=1.5cm, bottom=1cm, left=1.25cm, right=1.25cm]{geometry}
  \usepackage{changepage}
  \begin{document}
  \normalsize\textbf{Book title}\hspace{3.3cm}\textbf{Author's name}\hspace{5.4cm} 2010\\
  \hangindent=4.25cm
  \hangafter=0 This book is about some guy who wrote a book because he felt like a book would be a good thing to write.....etc etc etc
  \normalsize\textbf{Book title 2}\hspace{3.1cm}\textbf{Longer Author's name}\hspace{4.9cm} 1991\\
  \hangindent=4.25cm 
  \hangafter=0 This book is about a woman.....etc etc

  \end{document}

As you can see I have placed \hspace commands mid line to produce the required spacing, but it's very tedious to do this for many enteries. Is there a better way that doesn't involve using the table environment?

enter image description here

Best Answer

One non-tabular approach using the tabto package:

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{scrreprt}
\usepackage{tabto}
\parindent0pt
\parskip.5em
\begin{document}
\NumTabs{3}

\noindent {\bfseries Book title} \tab{\bfseries Author's name} \tab{2010}

This book is about some guy who wrote a book because he felt like a book would be a good thing to write.....etc etc etc

{\bfseries Book title 2} \tab{\bfseries Longer Author's name} \tab{1991}

This book is about a woman\ldots etc. etc.

\end{document}

MWE

However, note that this could be the wrong way if you have some very long names. In this case you can use \parbox and \hfill. Example:

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{scrreprt}
\def\tab#1{\parbox[t]{.3\linewidth}{#1}\hfill}
\parindent0pt
\parskip.5em
\begin{document}

\tab{\bfseries Book title} \tab{\bfseries Author's name} \tab{2010}

This book is about some guy who wrote a book because he felt like a book would be a good thing to write.....etc etc etc

\tab{\bfseries Book title 2} \tab{\bfseries Very very very long Author's name} \tab{1991}

This book is about a woman\ldots etc. etc.

\end{document}

MWE2