Blank space between paragraphs

Question

I am trying to learn how to use Texmaker (just for the record, I don't know a single thing about programming or Latex) and I am having some difficulty to create space between paragraphs or between lines. For example, I start my document with:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\begin{document}

Semisimple modules

Theorem...

\end{document}

I want to leave an empty line between "Semisimple modules" and "Theorem...", how can I do this?

Remember that I am a completely newbie with Texmaker (and with programs in general...) so please be patient with me if I ask too obvious things or if I make silly mistakes. Thanks in advance.

Welcome to TeX.SX! Please help us to help you and add a minimal working example (MWE) that illustrates your problem. It will be much easier for us to reproduce your situation and find out what the issue is when we see compilable code, starting with \documentclass{...} and ending with \end{document}. You might also want to add to your question how you're including the pdfs etc. — Aradnix, Oct 18 '14 at 06:53
Little advice: One ouf our members wrote a good introduction for novices. You can check it out if you want to. — Johannes_B, Oct 18 '14 at 06:57
`Semisimple modules \ [blankline]
Theorem...`

would do the trick, if you only want to insert a blank line. — Bernard, Oct 18 '14 at 09:22
Meta-comment: You're trying to learn LaTeX here, not Texmaker. There are a lot of text editors that have LaTeX specific features, and whether you write that code in Texmaker or any of the others is mostly completely irrelevant - it is the code itself that matters, not which program you've written it in, the output will be the same. — Torbjørn T., Oct 18 '14 at 10:00
@Bernard -- please, no double backslashes to leave blank lines! see Best choice between using \ or leaving space after each paragraph to end the paragraph — barbara beeton, Oct 18 '14 at 16:44
@barbara beeton: I know that but the O.P. specifically asked for a blank space between paragraphs — and I understood it as ‘between two particular paragraphs’, so I couldn't simply say \setlength\parskip{\baselineskip}, which would be global. Unless I misunderstood thz O.P.'s requirement? — Bernard, Oct 18 '14 at 16:58
@Bernard -- since s/he is presumably trying to learn, it's not a good idea to start off by teaching bad practices that have to be unlearned later. recommending a good introduction (as already done in a comment) is really more helpful even than a quick answer. — barbara beeton, Oct 18 '14 at 17:01

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 18 '14 at 07:16

You want to give structure to your document. Here's an example.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{amsthm}
\newtheorem{thm}{Theorem}[section]

\begin{document}

\section{Semisimple modules}

A module is said to be \emph{semisimple} if it equals the sum
of its simple submodules. Note that the zero module is semisimple,
being the sum of the (empty) family of its simple submodules.

A ring is called \emph{semisimple} if it is semisimple as a right
module over itself. We shall see later that right semisimple is
the same as left semisimple, so we can omit the indication of the
side.

\begin{thm}
A module is semisimple if and only if it is a direct sum of
simple submodules.
\end{thm}

\begin{proof}
It's obvious, isn't it?
\end{proof}

\end{document}

enter image description here

As you see, the space above and below the statement is automatically added.

Blank space between paragraphs

1 Answers1