LaTeX book class: Twosided document with wrong margins

Question

I am trying to write my thesis in latex... Cannot get the layout straight though :? I'm using the following document class:

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper,twoside,openright]{book}

My problem is: on the odd numbered pages there is a big margin right, and a small margin left - it should be the other way round... (for binding & stuff) I am a little puzzled by this -- am I just to stupid to see the obvious? The odd page numbers appear on the 'right' page of a bound document, so there needs to be a larger gutter margin on the left for binding -- and vice versa. Right?

Why does LaTeX not behave like this?

Here is the full code to produce a small Tex file that shows my problem:

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper,twoside,openright]{book}
\begin{document}
\chapter{blah}
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\end{document}

Edit: I know about a lot of ways to manually specify the page margins, like

\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{53pt}  

or ...

\usepackage[lmargin=1cm,rmargin=2.5cm,tmargin=2.5cm,bmargin=2.5cm]{geometry} .

I just wanted to use the default settings and don't understand why they do not behave as expected.

Answer 1

No, that's right. The odd pages should have a bigger margin. If you take a twosided book, you have 3 margings: On the left, in the middle, on the right. Every margin should be the same size. The one in the middle is build by two margins from each side. So it has to be smaller.

If you want to add a bindingoffset, you need to use the package geometry:

\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{bindingoffset=1cm}

or use another class, like the KOMA-classes:

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper,twoside,openright,BCOR=1cm]{scrbook} 

Answer 2

The extra space is for the margin notes. In general, to see what's going on with your layout, you can put \usepackage{layout} in your preamble, and then stick \layout in your document to get a diagram and listing of geometry settings.

In your case, as I say, what's going in is the extra space for margin notes. If you don't want it, use \setlength{\marginparwidth}{0pt}.

Answer 3

If you have the time and inclination to learn more about this, and many other things about page layout and document design in general, I believe that studying the memoir package will give you an excellent return on your investment.

In particular, memdesign.pdf gives the underlying principles a thorough going-over, and memman.pdf is a comprehensive (though large!) reference.