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For some reason in the following code, changing the margin argument for the geometry package line does nothing to the document. Even if I comment out the geometry package it doesn't go back to the defaults. I made sure I'm opening up the right PDF, I even deleted the pdf file to make sure I was opening up the correct PDF. I'm trying to get the space at the bottom of the page to be less (for some odd reason, it is way too much by default.)

\usepackage{fancyhdr} % for headers and footers
\usepackage{lipsum}   % for dummy text


% headers
\small Derper McDerp \\
\small Derponomics 101 \\
\small Dr. Derpy Derp

% footers

% need to specify the pagestyle as fancy

\section*{Essay 3}

Anyone know what is going on with the geometry package?

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Why are you including the geometry package twice? –  Peter Grill Nov 4 '11 at 20:16
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1 Answer

up vote 7 down vote accepted

Your MWE as is does not compile and results in

LaTeX Error: Option clash for package geometry.

But, loading the geometry package just once as:


seems to work fine. Adjusting the setting bottom changes the margin as expected. For instance, using bottom=3in results in the following. I enabled showframe to see the effect.

enter image description here

As @egreg commented, the \geometry command can be used multiple times and the effects are cumulative. Perhaps you got confused with having multiple \geometry commands and the \usepackage options. So the following will yield the same results as above:

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One can use the \geometry command multiple times, it has cumulative effect. –  egreg Nov 4 '11 at 20:23
Good point. I will mention that in the answer. –  Peter Grill Nov 4 '11 at 20:25
and if you ever want to change the geometry, you can use \newgeometry... –  cmhughes Nov 5 '11 at 1:37
Thank you. I'd was patching that code together with copying and pasting from examples which is how two geometry calls got in there. Oddly enough getting rid of the duplicate and combining the geometry arguments fixed the problem. –  Bre Nov 5 '11 at 1:37
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