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I am writing a long LaTeX document using the book documentclass, and after having typed already almost 400 pages, I have decided I want to change the format for new paragraphs to be more similar to the letter style, meaning that instead of an indented line, I would like to have some vertical space between paragraphs (not as much as a whole line) and the new paragraph to begin without indentation.

I could do this by placing \noindent at the beginning of each paragraph, and maybe adjusting the space with \vspace, but I imagine there is a better way than doing this one paragraph at a time for over 400 pages...

Lorenzo B.
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Valerio De Angelis
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1 Answers1

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You can do \usepackage{parskip}, but, please, compare the two images below: the shorter your paragraph, more white bands across the page will appear. Maybe good for a letter; for books, I strongly adverse it.

For the first image I commented out \usepackage{parskip}.

\documentclass[a4paper]{book}
\usepackage{parskip}

\usepackage{lipsum} % for mock text


\begin{document}


\lipsum


\end{document}

enter image description here

enter image description here

egreg
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  • Oh boy, oh boy... I never really realized how bad paragraph skips actually look... – campa Mar 19 '22 at 14:11
  • The white bands are good for eyes. – Display Name Mar 19 '22 at 17:47
  • @user271232 I don't think so. And generations of typographers agree. – egreg Mar 19 '22 at 17:49
  • I really think that the default parskip is too much (something as double what it should be). With 5pt plus 1pt it's much better – Rmano Mar 20 '22 at 11:29
  • Although, thinking a bit more, in a physical, two-sided book is a nonno, because it basically kills the alignment in the lines in a spread. I use it just for online documents. – Rmano Mar 20 '22 at 11:46