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Latex by default indents the first line of a new paragraph, but does not leave empty vertical space.

Currently, I am writing a text with many formulas in it. I don't think this paragraph style works well in my document, because the empty space after a formula is much more recognizable than new paragraphs and this hides the structure of the text.

I started to use \\ \\ for adding empty lines, but this seems to be really bad form.

So I have two questions:

  1. How can I globally change the way a new paragraph is indicated. In particular, how can I add empty vertical space?
  2. How is this usually handled in mathematics and physics texts?
klirk
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  • don't use // //. Have a look at the parskip packge – muxoveji May 23 '19 at 16:57
  • @muxoveji: Why not? – klirk May 23 '19 at 16:59
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    // should not be used outside of tabulars - if you want a new line, insert an empty line or \par. It will create many underfull box warnings. – muxoveji May 23 '19 at 17:00
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    you should almost never use \\ outside of alignments and certainly never \\ \\ (which latex will warn about in most cases) as the first comment said the parskip package will give a design with vertical space rather than indentation. – David Carlisle May 23 '19 at 17:16
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    @JouleV that is bad advice, usually. (Even though it is true) – David Carlisle May 23 '19 at 17:17
  • @DavidCarlisle AFAIK parskip resets the indentation (https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/181451/156344) –  May 23 '19 at 17:18
  • @JouleV yes because using indentation and vertical space is really bad style but also it guards against all those "hidden" paragraphs where if you just set the parskip primitive you will get unexpected space. – David Carlisle May 23 '19 at 17:19
  • @DavidCarlisle Actually I usually use none of them so that may be a case I haven't faced. Thanks for the information. –  May 23 '19 at 17:21
  • @JouleV section headings, lines in a center environment, list items, etc all implemented as paragraphs internally and so are affected by a global \parskip setting in ways that you might not expect without looking at the implementation. – David Carlisle May 23 '19 at 17:23

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