Question: I am trying to create a layout with two "columns," where the right-hand column itself has two columns, which are right and left aligned, respectively. For instance:

```
This is some text in the first                Label  Foo
column.                               Another Label  Foo Bar Baz

```

I am familiar with the technique to create left and righ aligned text on the same line via `minipage` environments, so extending that idea I've setup the right-hand column to contain a `tabular` to line up its labels and text. Here's what I have:

```
\documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{report}
\usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry}
\begin{document}

\noindent
\begin{minipage}[t]{.49\textwidth}
\flushleft
Some long testing text to illustrate the alignment problem.
\end{minipage}
%
\hfill
%
\noindent
\begin{minipage}[t]{.49\textwidth}
\flushright
\begin{tabular}{r l}
\textbf{Some Long Label} & Bar \\
\textbf{Another Long Label} & Foo Bar Baz \\
\end{tabular}
\end{minipage}

\end{document}

```

This compiles and *mostly* works, except for one problem: the top of the text in the table appears somewhat higher than the top of the text in the left minipage. I believe this is due to the fact that `tabular`'s naturally have some extra vertical space before and after them, but I do not know how to fix the problem.

My question is either, how can I fix my code to have the lines of text in each `minipage` line up vertically or, alternatively, is there some cleaner way of creating this layout without using `tabular`?

Answer: 
You forgot to use `[t]` also in the `tabular`:

```
\documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{report}
\usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry}
\begin{document}

\noindent
\begin{minipage}[t]{.49\textwidth}
\raggedright
Some long testing text to illustrate the alignment problem.
\end{minipage}% <-- Don't forget this one
%
\hfill
%
\begin{minipage}[t]{.49\textwidth}
\raggedleft
\begin{tabular}[t]{@{} r l @{}}% <-- Don't forget @{}!
\textbf{Some Long Label} & Bar \\
\textbf{Another Long Label} & Foo Bar Baz \\
\end{tabular}
\end{minipage}

\end{document}

```

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

Never use `\flushleft` and `\flushright` as commands: they exist only because there are the environments `flushleft` and `flushright`. The commands to use are `\raggedright` and `\raggedleft`.

An easier approach is with `tabular*`:

```
\documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{report}
\usepackage[margin=1in,showframe]{geometry}
\begin{document}

\noindent
\begin{tabular*}{\textwidth}{@{}p{.45\textwidth}@{\extracolsep{\fill}}r@{}}
\raggedright
Some long testing text to illustrate the alignment problem.
&
\begin{tabular}[t]{@{}r l@{}}
\textbf{Some Long Label} & Bar \\
\textbf{Another Long Label} & Foo Bar Baz \\
\end{tabular}
\end{tabular*}

\end{document}

```

I added `showframe` just to show the margins.

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dxeqr.png)
Here's a solution that sets each `minipage` as a `tabularx` instead:

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

```
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tabularx}% http://ctan.org/pkg/tabularx
\begin{document}

Some text before.

\noindent
\begin{tabularx}{.5\linewidth}[t]{@{}X@{}}
  Some long testing text to illustrate the alignment problem.
\end{tabularx}%
\begin{tabularx}{.5\linewidth}[t]{%
    >{\raggedleft\bfseries}p{.3\linewidth}
    >{\raggedright\arraybackslash}X@{}}
  Some Long Label & Bar \\
  Another Long Label & Foo Bar Baz
\end{tabularx}%

Some text after.

\end{document}

```

Alignment of each column is specified using that [`array` package](http://ctan.org/pkg/array) interface (loaded by [`tabularx`](http://ctan.org/pkg/tabularx)).

Note that these blocks will not break across the page boundary.