The LaTeX Companion, Second Edition

Chapter 6. Mastering Floats

Documents would be easier to read if all the material that belonged together was never split between pages. However, this is often technically impossible and TeX will, by default, split textual material between two pages to avoid partially filled pages. Nevertheless, when this outcome is not desired (as with figures and tables), the material must be “floated” to a convenient place, such as the bottom or the top of the current or next page, to prevent half-empty pages.

This chapter shows how “large chunks” of material can be kept conveniently on the same page by using a float object. We begin by introducing the parameters that define how LaTeX typesets its basic figure and table float environments, and we describe some ...