[Tex/LaTex] Title, author and email flush-left alignment

horizontal alignmenttitles

I need to edit a document (not written by me, so I'd like to keep tinkering to a minimum), and want to left-align the title, and both authors and their details. It currently appears centred.

I've tried to modify answers to similar questions, but my modifications created errors — one with \makeatother did almost align everything left, but messed up the required point sizes and line spacings.

If anyone can help, please keep it simple, I'm new to this!

    %\usepackage{breakcites}

    \documentclass{article}
    \usepackage{amsmath}
    %\usepackage{natbib}
    \usepackage{amssymb}
    \usepackage{latexsym}
    \usepackage{amsthm}
    \usepackage{setspace}
    \usepackage[top=1.0in, bottom=1.0in, left=1.6in, right=1.6in]{geometry}
    \usepackage{relsize}
    \usepackage{mathrsfs}
    \usepackage{multirow}
    \usepackage{appendix}
    \usepackage{hyperref}
    \usepackage{pxfonts}
    %\usepackage{fontspec}


    \usepackage{xcolor}
    \hypersetup{
        colorlinks,
        linkcolor={black!50!black},
        citecolor={black!50!black},
        urlcolor={black!50!black}
    }

    \setcounter{MaxMatrixCols}{10}
    %TCIDATA{OutputFilter=LATEX.DLL}
    %TCIDATA{Version=5.50.0.2953}
    %TCIDATA{<META NAME="SaveForMode" CONTENT="1">}
    %TCIDATA{BibliographyScheme=BibTeX}
    %TCIDATA{LastRevised=Tuesday, July 21, 2015 21:10:06}
    %TCIDATA{<META NAME="GraphicsSave" CONTENT="32">}
    %TCIDATA{Language=American English}

    \doublespacing
    \newtheorem*{T1 NAME}{T1 NAME}
    \newtheorem*{T2 NAME}{T2 NAME}
    \newtheorem*{T3 NAME}{T3 NAME}
    \newtheorem{T4 NAME}{T4 NAME}
    \newtheorem*{T5 NAME}{T5 NAME}
    %\input{tcilatex}


    \begin{document}
    \title{\textbf{TITLE}}
    \author{\textsc{AUTHOR 1}\\
    \small \emph{AFFILIATION 1}\\
    \href{EMAIL 1}{\small{EMAIL 1}}\\\\
    \textsc{AUTHOR 2}\\
    \small \emph{AFFILIATION 2}\\
    \href{EMAIL 2}{\small{EMAIL 2}}}
    \date{}
    \maketitle

Best Answer

Since you're using the article document class, I suggest you the \patchcmd macro of the etoolbox package to alter the behavior of the \@maketitle macro; the \@maketitle macro contains formatting instructions that are executed internally when LaTeX encounters the \maketitle instruction.

Simply insert the following commands towards the end of your document's preamble:

\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\@maketitle}{\begin{center}}{\begin{flushleft}}{}{}
\patchcmd{\@maketitle}{\begin{tabular}[t]{c}}{\begin{tabular}[t]{@{}l}}{}{}
\patchcmd{\@maketitle}{\end{center}}{\end{flushleft}}{}{}
\makeatother

The code replaces the \begin{center} and \end{center} statements with \begin{flushleft} and \end{flushleft}, and it changes the column type used in the internal tabular environment used to typeset the \author-related material from c ("center") to @{}l ("absolute flush-left").

Here's a version of your document, with the preamble stripped down to the bare necessities for typesetting the title, author, and date blocks. Incidentally, commands such as \small act as switches and do not take an argument. Thus, instead of \small{EMAIL 1}, it would be better to write {\small EMAIL 1} -- the curly braces should delimite the scope of the \small instruction.

    \documentclass{article}
    \usepackage{setspace}
    \doublespacing
    \usepackage[vmargin=1.0in,hmargin=1.6in]{geometry}
    \usepackage{pxfonts}
    \usepackage{xcolor}
    \usepackage{hyperref}
    \hypersetup{
        colorlinks,
        linkcolor={black!50!black},
        citecolor={black!50!black},
        urlcolor ={black!50!black}
        }

\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\@maketitle}{\begin{center}}{\begin{flushleft}}{}{}
\patchcmd{\@maketitle}{\begin{tabular}[t]{c}}{\begin{tabular}[t]{@{}l}}{}{}
\patchcmd{\@maketitle}{\end{center}}{\end{flushleft}}{}{}
\makeatother

    \begin{document}

    \title{\textbf{TITLE}}
    \author{\textsc{AUTHOR 1}\\
    \small \emph{AFFILIATION 1}\\
    \href{EMAIL 1}{\small{EMAIL 1}}\\\\
    \textsc{AUTHOR 2}\\
    \small \emph{AFFILIATION 2}\\
    \href{EMAIL 2}{\small{EMAIL 2}}}
    \date{}
    \maketitle

    \end{document}
Related Question