Hanseul Cho

Hanseul Cho

PhD candidate at KAIST AI. Prev intern at Google NYC. Working on ML/DL/Opt+Theory and LLMs.

[LaTeX Tips] The Most Elegant Way (Maybe) to Indicate Equally-Contributed Authors Separated with Commas

🗓     👀 Hits

TL;DR

📌 Use the command \rlap{$^*$} when you list multiple equally contributed authors’ names, separated by commas (e.g., ICLR template).

% For example:
[1stAuthor1]\thanks{Equal Contribution.},~~[1stAuthor2]\rlap{$^*$},~~[1stAuthor3]\rlap{$^*$},~~[2ndAuthor],...

What’s the Problem?

I’d like to share a visually appealing LaTeX trick(?) for listing multiple co-first authors that I recently figured out.

Let me introduce three of my “colleagues” (graduate students from KAIST AI) who will assist me in this document: meet Chahun Seol, Sanchul Heo, and Honseul Cha! Of course, they are all imaginary characters I created. (You may notice these names are all anagrams of my name, Hanseul Cho.) But in this document, they and I will play the role of co-authors of a brilliant paper submitted to ICLR 2026, preparing together for a camera-ready version of our manuscript. 😎 (Please don’t get me wrong; I don’t want to advertise an imaginary paper that I haven’t actually taken part in!)

You’re probably familiar with the command \thanks{...} for indicating equal contributions, affiliations, or side information about specific authors. But how should we mark the same footnote symbol (e,g. asterisk(*), …) to mutiple author names among us (e.g., co-first authors)?

For example, one of the simplest line of code would be …

\author{
% Please be aware that the default template for ICLR main conference papers recommends us putting commas to delimit the author names.
Hanseul Cho\thanks{Equal Contribution.},~~Chahun Seol$^*$,~~Sanchul Heo$^*$,~~Honseul Cha \\ % author names
Kim Jaechul Graduate School of AI, KAIST \\ % affiliation
\texttt{\{jhs4015,chahun.seol,sanchul\_heo,honseul-cha\}@kaist.ac.kr} \\ % e-mail addresses
\And
...[More CoAuthors]...
}

It seems good… or does it? When we actually compile this, we get the following:

Just Asterisks

Do you notice anything weird? Yes, the gap between the asterisk and the comma!

  • The command \thanks{...}, somehow reduces the gap between the footnote mark and the comma, so that the compiled result shows the comma right after the last letter of an author name; 🙂
  • The command $^*$, however, is just a letter (in math mode of LaTeX)! It has no additional function to shrink the gap between the commas and the author names. 👿

What should we do to match the lengths of the gaps? 🤔

Common Failure(?) Cases

👺 Failure 1: If the command \thanks is the only answer, how about using the same command several times?:

...
Hanseul Cho\thanks{Equal Contribution.},~~Chahun Seol\thanks{Equal Contribution.},~~Sanchul Heo\thanks{Equal Contribution.},~~Honseul Cha \\ % author names
...

The compiled result:

Multiple Thanks

Obviously, this isn’t the right way…😫 it applies distinct footnote marks for all co-author names (attached with \thanks).

…

👺 Failure 2: How about manually adjusting the horizontal spaces?

...
Hanseul Cho\thanks{Equal Contribution.},~~Chahun Seol$^*$\hspace{-1.6mm},~~Sanchul Heo$^*$\hspace{-1.6mm},~~Honseul Cha \\ % author names
...

The compiled result:

Multiple Thanks

Okay, now it seems (almost) perfect, at least visually! However, I don’t want to do it this way: the size of shrinkage (e.g., -1.6mm above) needs to be determined carefully through multiple compilations. Not only is it not elegant, but it’s also practically undesirable, especially when your entire LaTeX project is so heavy…

The Solution That I’ve Found

To figure out an elegant & practical solution, I probed the ICLR template style file (iclr2026_conference.sty), with the keyword ‘thanks’. And I found the following code lines…

\def\maketitle{\par
\begingroup
   \def\thefootnote{\fnsymbol{footnote}}
   \def\@makefnmark{\hbox to 0pt{$^{\@thefnmark}$\hss}} % for perfect author
                                                        % name centering
%   The footnote-mark was overlapping the footnote-text,
%   added the following to fix this problem               (MK)
   \long\def\@makefntext##1{\parindent 1em\noindent
                            \hbox to1.8em{\hss $\m@th ^{\@thefnmark}$}##1}
   \@maketitle \@thanks
\endgroup
\setcounter{footnote}{0}
\let\maketitle\relax \let\@maketitle\relax
\gdef\@thanks{}\gdef\@author{}\gdef\@title{}\let\thanks\relax}

Can you guess how the command \thanks is redefined? I’m not an expert on LaTeX, but I somehow realized that the fourth line above (\def\@makefnmark{\hbox to 0pt{$^{\@thefnmark}$\hss}}) is sort of an important part, which seems to put the footnote mark behind the author name! But what is \hss?

I asked Google Search for help (side note: I “still” prefer to find solutions for debugging my code without using LLM, although I’m a PhD student studying AI…). The Google Search told me: SEE THIS POST ON STACKEXCHANGE (“What are the \hbox \hss \hskip commands?”). ROGER THAT.

It basically tells us:

  • \hbox to <WIDTH>{<SOMETHING>} puts <SOMETHING> inside a horizontal box of width <WIDTH>.
  • You can adjust the alignment within the box using \hss inside <SOMETHING>.
    • If <SOMETHING> is \hss <STUFF>\hss, it aligns <STUFF> at the center.
    • Also, \hss <STUFF> corresponds to the right alignment of <STUFF>.
    • Similarly, <STUFF>\hss corresponds to the left alignment of <STUFF>.
  • For the cases where <WIDTH> equals 0pt, TeX introduces their shorthand commands: clap, llap, and rlap.
    • \hbox to 0pt{\hss <STUFF>\hss} == \clap{<STUFF>}.
    • \hbox to 0pt{\hss <STUFF>} == \llap{<STUFF>}: the right end of <STUFF> comes to center, so the text <STUFF> goes left of the center.
    • \hbox to 0pt{<STUFF>\hss} == \rlap{<STUFF>}: the left end of <STUFF> comes to center, so the text <STUFF> goes right of the center.

So, my conjecture is: Since the style file contains \hbox to 0pt{$^{\@thefnmark}$\hss}, if \@thefnmark is substituted with the asterisk(*), then it must be equivalent to \rlap{$^*$}!

Therefore, my FINAL TRIAL is as follows:

...
Hanseul Cho\thanks{Equal Contribution.},~~Chahun Seol\rlap{$^*$},~~Sanchul Heo\rlap{$^*$},~~Honseul Cha \\ % author names
...

And the compiled result is…

rlap is GOAT

TADA! An elegant code (without laborious decision of numerics) and visually satisfying result! 🎉

Conclusion

I hope this document help some researchers who are still novice in LaTeX writing (like me). Lastly, say goodbye to my awesome “colleagues”, Chahun Seol, Sanchul Heo, and Honseul Cha! 👋

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