LaTeX: Multiple authors in a two-column article - layout

Question

I'm kind of new to LaTeX and I am having a bit of a problem..
I am using a twocolumn layout for my article. There are four authors involved with different affiliations, and I am trying to list all of them under the title so they span the entire width of the page (all on the same level). It should be similar to this:
Article Title
auth1FN auth1LN 2 ... 3 auth4FN auth4LN
department ... department
school ... school
email#edu ... email#edu
Abstract .....................
.................... .....................
.................... .....................
.................... .....................
Currently I have something along the lines:
\documentclass[10pt,twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage{multicol}
\begin{document}
\begin{multicols}{2}
\title{Article Title}
\author{
First Last\\
Department\\
school\\
email#edu
\and
First Last\\
...
}
\date{}
\maketitle
\end{multicols}
\begin{abstract}
...
\end{abstract}
\section{Introduction}
...
\end{document}
The problem is that the authors are not displayed all on the same level, instead I get the first three next to each other, followed by the last one underneath.
Is there way to achieve what I want? Also if possible, how can I customize the font of the affiliations (to be smaller and in italic)?

Answer 1

I put together a little test here:
\documentclass[10pt,twocolumn]{article}
\title{Article Title}
\author{
First Author\\
Department\\
school\\
email#edu
\and
Second Author\\
Department\\
school\\
email#edu
\and
Third Author\\
Department\\
school\\
email#edu
\and
Fourth Author\\
Department\\
school\\
email#edu
}
\date{\today}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\begin{abstract}
\ldots
\end{abstract}
\section{Introduction}
\ldots
\end{document}
Things to note, the title, author and date fields are declared before \begin{document}. Also, the multicol package is likely unnecessary in this case since you have declared twocolumn in the document class.
This example puts all four authors on the same line, but if your authors have longer names, departments or emails, this might cause it to flow over onto another line. You might be able to change the font sizes around a little bit to make things fit. This could be done by doing something like {\small First Author}. Here's a more detailed article on \LaTeX font sizes:
https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/Support/KB/Docs/LaTeXChangingTheFont
To italicize you can use {\it First Name} or \textit{First Name}.
Be careful though, if the document is meant for publication often times journals or conference proceedings have their own formatting guidelines so font size trickery might not be allowed.

Answer 2

What about using a tabular inside \author{}, just like in IEEE macros:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\title{Hello, World}
\author{
\begin{tabular}[t]{c#{\extracolsep{8em}}c}
I. M. Author & M. Y. Coauthor \\
My Department & Coauthor Department \\
My Institute & Coauthor Institute \\
email, address & email, address
\end{tabular}
}
\maketitle
\end{document}
This will produce two columns authors with any documentclass.
Results: