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From: sommer@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: abstract in two-column format
Message-ID: <00942C55.0D9E5660@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU>
Date: 16 Jan 91 05:53:56 GMT
References: <20077@rasp.eng.cam.ac.uk>
Sender: @chaos.cs.brandeis.edu
Reply-To: sommer@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU
Organization: Brandeis University
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In article <20077@rasp.eng.cam.ac.uk>, pi@eng.cam.ac.uk (Pablo Iglesias) writes:
>I'm writing a paper for a conference where they require that the abstrac
>t and a set of keywords be inserted just after the title and authors, centered
>on the whole page.  I have been using article style on two-column, but this 
>places the abstract in the first column.  Can anyone please tell  me whether
>there already exists a style  file that might do what I want, and if not
>how I could go about modifying an existing style file?

See LaTeX Manual, bottom of page 162:

\documentstyle[twocolumn]{article}
\begin{document}
\twocolumn[

\begin{center} {\bf Put Your Title Here}\\ {\em Name, Dept. of Whatever, Your
University} \end{center} 

{\bf Abstract:} {\it Put it here.} I like a little extra space before the main
text, so I put in some extra  \vspace*{1ex} ]	%<-- the ] ends spanning
						% two columns

%Now back to two separate columns:

Here is the first \P \ of column one. [...]