%%
%% The LaTeX Companion, 2ed (second printing August 2004)
%%
%% Example 8-2-15 on page 477.
%%
%% Copyright (C) 2004 Frank Mittelbach, Michel Goossens,
%%    Johannes Braams, David Carlisle, and Chris Rowley
%%
%% It may be distributed and/or modified under the conditions
%% of the LaTeX Project Public License, either version 1.3
%% of this license or (at your option) any later version.
%%
%% See http://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt for details.
%%

\documentclass{ttctexamargin}
\pagestyle{empty}
\setcounter{page}{6}
\setlength\textwidth{231.0pt}

\StartShownPreambleCommands
\usepackage{amsmath}
\StopShownPreambleCommands
\begin{document}
This example has two column-pairs.
\renewcommand\minalignsep{0pt}
\begin{align}    \text{Compare }
  x^2 + y^2 &= 1               &
  x^3 + y^3 &= 1              \\
  x         &= \sqrt   {1-y^2} &
  x         &= \sqrt[3]{1-y^3}
\end{align}
This example has three column-pairs.
\renewcommand\minalignsep{15pt}
\begin{flalign}
    x    &= y      & X  &= Y  &
      a  &= b+c              \\
    x'   &= y'     & X' &= Y' &
      a' &= b                \\
  x + x' &= y + y'            &
  X + X' &= Y + Y' & a'b &= c'b
\end{flalign}
\end{document}