Is using \\[.5 \baselineskip] bad practice?

Question

I've developed the habit of using \\[.5\baselineskip] to indicate that a part of a bigger argument ended in that line. I found this quite helpful to structure bigger arguments.

By now, I start questioning myself if that might be bad practice. In particular concerning the readability of documents.

If there is someone here with experience in professional typesetting with well reasoned arguments for, or against this practice, I would be glad to hear it.

David Carlisle · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-16T14:11:03.993

11

It's probably bad practice, although hard to say with no context.

Firstly \\ does not end the paragraph. If your narrative reaches a point where a large visual break is needed then a paragraph break would seem more natural.

If all paragraph breaks need the same visual skip then there is nothing more to do, but if this is a special break then using

blah blah blah.

\newthought

Blah blah blah

Not only makes the source document more readable, and you can define \newthought in one place to affect all such constructs in the document, starting with

\newcommand\newthought{\par\vspace{.5\baselineskip}}

edited Jan 16 '16 at 14:11

answered Jan 16 '16 at 13:18

David Carlisle

757,742

1

Might want to steal some code from memoirs fancybreak macro, then the paragraph after the break will not be indented. – daleif Jan 16 '16 at 13:25
There's already \bigskip which bascially nudges things down by \bigskipamount (if I remember correctly)... – Seamus Jan 16 '16 at 13:32
@Seamus Indeed. I was actually thinking of posting about that. – Alenanno Jan 16 '16 at 13:37
Wouldn’t it be a bit more robust to add \par to the definition? – Tobi Jan 16 '16 at 13:42
@Tobi not when used like this, with blanks lines around it, then the par is already implied. But of course not all users tend to write their code readable like this – daleif Jan 16 '16 at 13:49
@daleif but if it is a new paragraph then it isn't clear why you'd want to suppress indentation. – David Carlisle Jan 16 '16 at 14:01
1

@Seamus sure but it's better to have a specific command even if you initially just define it to be \bigskip – David Carlisle Jan 16 '16 at 14:01
@DavidCarlisle, thanks a lot for the quick answer . I will change my style in that direction. Also thanks to all others for the interesting discussions. Always reminds me, that there still is a lot to learn about typesetting. – Dave Jan 16 '16 at 14:06
@Tobi done. (\par) – David Carlisle Jan 16 '16 at 14:12
1

@DavidCarlisle if it is a new paragraph, then why the space? There is no need for it. If it is not indented, then the blank space above it should in dictate we are starting something new – daleif Jan 16 '16 at 15:24
@daleif well perhaps (your reasoning is that it's like an invisible section heading) the OP doesn't give much context so you could be right:-) – David Carlisle Jan 16 '16 at 15:28
@DavidCarlisle that is usually what people around here use it for. Though I'm trying to teach them to keep the use at a minimum. Sadly I'm currently seeing an increase in the use of \\ in the text, basically lots of new users does not understand the paragraph and gets really bad advise from their project advisors (who foes not have a clue either) – daleif Jan 16 '16 at 15:34

score 4 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:34

Honestly, your definition of .5\baselineskip is exactly the length of \medskip, which is equivalent to \vspace{\medskipamount}. If we show these values we get:

\verb!\baselineskip =! \the\baselineskip

\verb!     \medskip =! \the\medskipamount

enter image description here

So if we define a new length of that size, it'll look like \medskip. Of course, the major difference would be the stretchable lengths: the plus indicates how much it will be stretched, and the minus how much it will be shrinked, if required. See this egreg's answer for more info.

So here's a comparison between \newarg, a new command that is half a line, and \medskip:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\newlength\sms
\setlength\sms{.5\baselineskip} 

\newcommand\newarg{\par\vspace{\sms}}

\begin{document}
\lipsum[66]

\newarg

\lipsum[66]

\medskip

\lipsum[66]
\end{document}

Is using \\[.5 \baselineskip] bad practice?

2 Answers2