Environment (LaTeX2e unofficial reference manual (November 2018))

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### 2.5 Environment

Synopsis:

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

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}

Unofficial LaTeX2e reference manual