Question: I have defined a command for a letter in the margin as follows (using marginnote because marginpar did not work at all):

```
\newcommand{\sideletter}[1]{\marginnote{\Huge\bf\sffamily\color{orange} #1}}

```

I appreciate that there are likely going to be issues with vertical alignment, due to the different fonts/sizes and when issuing the commands I have done the following to address the issue:

```
\sideletter{Q}[-1mm]

```

and

```
\sideletter{A}[1mm]

```

This seems to just about fix the issue vertically. However I cannot seem to align horizontally - the A is just *slightly* further to the right.

Example image:

![example](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5YtBa.png)

Does anyone have any idea about how to approach this? I have tried using hfill and centering but nothing seems to work.

Below is a minimum working example:

```
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{marginnote}
\newcommand{\sideletter}[1]{\marginnote{\Huge\bf\sffamily #1}}
\setlength\parindent{0pt}
\begin{document}
\reversemarginpar
\sideletter{Q}
\lipsum[6]

\sideletter{A}
\lipsum[6]
\end{document}

```

I think in this MWE ![MWE](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fcV6u.png) the misalignment is possibly less obvious, but it is still there. Perhaps the font choice does have *some* bearing on it, but not everything.

Answer: 
As far as I see, noone has explained the *reason* for your alignment problem yet. The bounding boxes mentioned by Frank Mittelbach do play a role (see below), but the more important point is that `\marginnote`s in the left margin are typeset `\raggedleft` (so that you have *right* alignment). So it's very much by design that the `A` is slightly further to the right: the `Q` is a bit wider and thus protrudes more to the left.

As explained in [the `marginnote` documentation](ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/tex/macros/latex/contrib/marginnote/marginnote.pdf), you could switch to `\raggedright`:

```
\renewcommand*{\raggedleftmarginnote}{\raggedright}

```

But this is not a good idea since you'll get too much space between the `\marginnote` and the main text. A better solution would be to use

```
\newcommand{\sideletter}[1]{\marginnote{\Huge\bf\sffamily\rlap{#1}\phantom{Q}}}

```

(where I neglected that `\bf` is deprecated; I just wanted to stay close to the original code). This produces a `\marginnote` that has the width of the letter `Q`, and the letter you want is put flush left. If you look closely, the `A` will then be slightly further to the *left*:

![Q versus A](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fh0dT.png)

This is explained in [Frank's answer](https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/58380): The `Q` just has a bit more white space to the left in its bounding box. And again, this is by design! There's only a *tiny bit* of the `A` that protrudes to the left, whereas the `Q` has really a lot of black in the left, so *visually* you have appropriate left alignment.
This one seems to work with marginpar:

```
\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{xcolor,blindtext}
\newcommand*{\noPlace}{\hrule height0pt width 0pt}
\reversemarginpar
\newcommand{\QA}[2]{%
  \mbox{}\leavevmode\marginpar{\textcolor{orange}{%
    \noPlace\sffamily\Huge#1}}%
    {\noPlace#2}\par}
\setlength{\marginparwidth}{0.2in}%
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}

\begin{document}
\QA{Q}{\blindtext}

\QA{A}{\blindtext}

\end{document}

```

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zJv74.png)