Take the 2-minute tour ×

In this answer am I being told, that I shouldn't use the a4 and the aeguill packages.

Why should I do that, and what should I use instead?

share|improve this question

1 Answer 1

up vote 4 down vote accepted

With regard to a4, a quote from the english version of l2tabu will do:

1.1 a4.sty, a4wide.sty

Do not use these ‘two’ packages any longer. You should delete them without replacement from your LaTeX source. Use the class option a4paper instead. Speaking in terms of typography these packages, or others similar to these do not provide good layout. What is even worse, there is more than one version of these packages around, and different versions of those packages are incompatible with one another, providing deviating settings for page margins. So you may not trust that your document will look the same—or just as bad? – when being compiled on someone else’s system when exchanging LaTeX source.

Replace: a4.sty, or a4wide.sty by class option a4paper

For aeguill, see Philippe Goutet' s answer to Are ae and aeguill only needed when using CM fonts?

share|improve this answer
If I remove the \usepackage{a4} then the margins become larger, even when I use class option a4paper. How do I know which margin layout is "correct"? –  Sandra Schlichting Jan 24 '13 at 14:49
@SandraSchlichting There's no "correct" layout, but there are better and worse ones. See tex.stackexchange.com/questions/71172/… –  lockstep Jan 24 '13 at 14:53
If I remove \usepackage{aeguill} then are the bottom of all letters cut off. My tex file is the one I linked to in the OP. –  Sandra Schlichting Jan 24 '13 at 14:53
@SandraSchlichting Might be a problem of your document class. Please edit your original question and include the additional information. –  lockstep Jan 24 '13 at 14:56
@SandraSchlichting I suppose you want to use the german margins. The easiest way to achieve them is to use the KOMA script classes like scrartcl which have a wider layout by default –  Rico Jan 24 '13 at 15:19

Your Answer


