Keeping tables/figures close to where they are mentioned

Is there any package or a method to force LaTeX to keep floating environments like table and figure closer to where they are declared?

You may also try to relax the rules for placement of floating environments, allowing the page to look worse; among others LaTeX requires that there is enough text on the page if the page is not taken entirely by floats.

This doesn't answer the question, but: TeX is assuming that you want the environment to float around. This means that you can't write "This table:", because "This table" may move somewhere else. Instead, you should write "as in Table ##". But if you absolutely need the table/figure to appear where you want it, then the answers on this page are for you.

Have a look here and follow some of the links mentioned: tex.stackexchange.com/questions/2275/… . // BTW, providing code is always a good idea, as you know .

8 Answers 8

Easing the float placement by options:

You could use more positioning options. Not just [h] . If you wish to place the figure near, allow more positioning options, for instance by [htbp] (here, top, bottom, page). Use a ! symbol to remove further restrictions. So, in many cases this is sufficient:

\begin[!htbp] 

Useful package regarding float placement:

• float introduces a placement option H enforcing the placement exactly at that point.
• placeins provides the command \FloatBarrier to limit the floating of figures or tables. You could place such a barrier before and after a listing.
• afterpage allows a more clever \clearpage , putting the effect off until the page is full: \afterpage

Completely avoiding a floating environment:

Package caption allows to add a caption outside a floating environment, meaning at any place you want. Use \captionof (for figures)

text \begin <\linewidth>\begin \includegraphics[width=.6\linewidth] \captionof \end \end even more text 

The minipage keeps graphic and caption together, the center environment add a bit of white space around the figure.

Further reading:

Because it's an important and not easy subject, there's a lot of material to be found, for instance in FAQ collections. There's an extensive document dealing with graphics inclusion, manipulation and placement:

• Using Imported Graphics in LaTeX and pdfLaTeX by Keith Reckdahl.

The interesting part for your question may be Part IV: The Figure Environment beginning on page 55.

There is also Frank Mittelbach's excellent answer describing the floating mechanism and related options in great detail:

@SamB: You could use \FloatBarrier before and after that portion of the paper or \clearpage (or variants) before and after.

@StefanKottwitz: I've added a link to Frank Mittelbach's float explanation, I hope you don't mind. If you do, please feel free to roll back.

Controlling floats isn't difficult once you understand what LaTeX is trying to do with them. Requisite FAQ link: https://texfaq.org/FAQ-floats

Three things, broadly speaking, will prevent floats from staying close to their definition:

• underspecified position parameters. I recommend always using [htbp] until the document is complete.
• graphics too large. Do you really need a graph 2/3 the page size?
• too many graphics near each other. Once graphics start building up, it just isn't possible to keep the last one near its source location.

Above all, forget about formatting your floats until the document is absolutely finished. You'll produce better results and write the document faster that way.

if anyone thinks the faq answer (will provides a link) doesn't say all that's needed, then please feel free to mail the via link at the bottom of the "faq answer page"; i try to keep up with what's said here, but i'm not omnipotent, apparently.

The FAQ link is broken, and I couldn't find live FAQs when searching tex.ac.uk. Has this resource moved?

Check out the float package. It adds ability to include [H] forced here float placement. You can also select this as automatic default with \floatplacement .

\documentclass % Example taken from https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/297564 \usepackage % here for H placement parameter \begin Text before the table. \begin[H] % placement parameter H \centering % if you want to center the table \caption \label % Code for table \end Text after the table. \end

try \begin[!htb] , in nearly all cases it helps. If not then use:

\usepackage[section]

it prevents placing floats before the section.

Fairly often all that you need is to declare tables and figures earlier, before the first point of reference (for example, one or two paragraphs before the point of reference, or before the previous subsection heading).

Unfortunately, it tends to be a little bit of trial and error. Some kinds of floats need to be declared earlier than others; for example, floats with placement [b] are sometimes trickier than floats with [t] .

If it is truly critical that your image / table gets placed where you have typed it in the document, then it isn't a float, and why not remove the float environment entirely ie, insert it directly with \captionof[. ] <. >for the captions.

@einpoklum \caption by default only works inside figure , table (and some other similar environments). \captionof (requires caption or capt-of package) on the other hand lets you add a numbered caption outside these environments.

As @asia1281 mentioned, the [h] directive helps. I did not know of [h!] before (thanks!), but reading around seems to suggest that it isn't quite forced as there may still be circumstances where LaTeX refuses to put the float right there.

Another thing that may help is one of \clearpage and \cleardoublepage . These force all unprocessed floats to be typeset and then a new page or two (with \cleardoublepage and some classes). If you wait until your document is written and you are worrying only about apperance, you can put one of these commands at the end of the text on the very bottom of a page to force the outstanding floats to appear right thereafter. This is really best saved for final stages and needs to be redone (or at least checked) whenever the text is edited.

\clearpage is useful in combination with the afterpage package to avoid empty space at the end of a page.

@Stefan Thanks! I'd not know of afterpage. That certainly makes the use of clearpage in these circumstances much easier.