After reading this question Should I use center or centering for figures?, I want to know the answer of the following. When should we use \\begin{center} instead of \\centering? For example, should...
Command \centering (the same without the blank line of environment center) wants to center the image (s) inside the given text width. With \centering the images are centered and placed one below the other, because both together can not fit into text width.
On the first page, \centering is used first and the center environment second, while on the second page, this order is reversed. The results clearly show inappropriate spacing for the lower figure (first page) and the upper figure (second page) i.e. for whichever figure uses center rather than \centering.
I think \center is what happens "under the hood" when you call begin{center} (and on the other end, \end{center} shows up as \endcenter), while \centering just applies to the entire current scope.
If you want to horizontally center all contents inside of a p type column, it is easier to use >{\centering\arraybackslash}p{5cm} instead of adding \centering to every single cell.
In the MWE below. What is the most convenient way to center the titles Preface and Abstract, rather than setting them flush left? \\documentclass{book} \\begin{document} \\chapter*{Preface} \\chapter*{
Here is an example of centering the text over a multicol environment and returning to justified text for the following content. There may be a better way, but I got errors trying to use a centering environment or a \par. The \justify command can also be placed just before \Blindtext. \documentclass{report} \usepackage{multicol} \usepackage ...
If you prefer the centering to be anchored at the alignment point, an alternative (although somewhat hacky) solution is to use \mathllap{•} and \mathrlap{•} inside a single gather environment:
Instead of centering you may consider to align all equations at the equal sign and center the whole multiline environment. For this, use the align or align* environment, see the amsmath user's guide (or type texdoc amsldoc at the command prompt). In any case, use amsmath. That package provides many kinds of multiline diplayed formula environments.
