I don't think that 'sidebar' has much to do with it. The part that is not working as expected is the 'mysidebar', which is not getting the 'outer' location, nor the 'none' captioning that I get with placefloat. setupfloat[mysidebar][leftmargindistance=-.25in,rightmargindistance=-.25in,outer,none] defineframedtext [sidebartext] [width=.4textwidth,bodyfont=small,corner=round,background=color,backgroundcolor=lightgray,align=flushleft] starttext This is a bit of text placefloat[newsidebar][leftmargindistance=-.25in,rightmargindistance=-.25in,outer,none]{}{ startsidebartext This is a short sidebar stopsidebartext } And something to follow. A bit of text placemysidebar{}{ startsidebartext This is a short sidebar stopsidebartext } And something to follow. stoptext