1-column abstract in 2-column document

One often requires that the abstract of a paper should appear across the entire page, even in a two-column paper. The required trick is:

\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}
...
\begin{document}
... % \author, etc
\twocolumn[
  \begin{@twocolumnfalse}
    \maketitle
    \begin{abstract}
      ...
    \end{abstract}
  \end{@twocolumnfalse}
  ]

Unfortunately, with the above \thanks won’t work in the \author list. If you need such specially-numbered footnotes, you can make them like this:

\title{Demonstration}
\author{Me, You\thanks{}}
\twocolumn[
  ... as above ...
]
{
  \renewcommand{\thefootnote}%
    {\fnsymbol{footnote}}
  \footnotetext[1]{Thanks for nothing}
}

and so on.

As an alternative, among other facilities the abstract package provides a \saythanks command and a onecolabstract environment which remove the need to fiddle with the \thanks and footnoting. They can be used like this:

\twocolumn[
  \maketitle             % full width title
  \begin{onecolabstract} % ditto abstract
    ... text
  \end{onecolabstract}
]
\saythanks            % typeset any \thanks

The memoir class offers all the facilities of abstract.

abstract.sty

macros/latex/contrib/abstract (or browse the directory)

memoir.cls

macros/latex/contrib/memoir (or browse the directory)

This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=onecolabs