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Environment

Synopsis:

\begin{environment-name}
  ...
\end{environment-name}

An environment is an area of LaTeX source, inside of which there is a distinct behavior. For instance, for poetry in LaTeX put the lines between \begin{verse} and \end{verse}.

\begin{verse}
  There once was a man from Nantucket \\
  ...
\end{verse}

See Environments, for a list of environments. Particularly notable is that every LaTeX document must have a document environment, a \begin{document} ... \end{document} pair.

The environment-name at the beginning must exactly match that at the end. This includes the case where environment-name ends in a star (*); both the \begin and \end texts must include the star.

Environments may have arguments, including optional arguments. This example produces a table. The first argument is optional (and causes the table to be aligned on its top row) while the second argument is required (it specifies the formatting of columns).

\begin{tabular}[t]{r|l}
  ... rows of table ...
\end{tabular}