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How can I set two double spaces between all paragraphs in a report? I have already set double spaces between lines with this command:

\usepackage{setspace}
\doublespacing
nixnotwin
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    Does \setlength{\parskip}{<insert length here>} not do what you want? – Willie Wong Dec 05 '10 at 15:00
  • Please don’t use double spacing between lines. It looks ugly and is quite unnecessary because LaTeX produces readable documents even with single spacing between lines. (This is unrelated to spaces between paragraphs, to which Willie has already posted the solution.) – Konrad Rudolph Dec 05 '10 at 15:09
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    @Willie: Setting simply \parskip is not recommendable since it also affects lists, headings and ToC, LoF, LoT. It is better to use the »parskip« package. – Thorsten Donig Dec 05 '10 at 15:24
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    @konrad: The guidelines for submitting my report states that I should complsorily have double space between lines, and 2 double spaces between paragraphs. – nixnotwin Dec 05 '10 at 16:45
  • willie & thorsten: I am little confused about what is the exact lenght in numbers for 2 double spaces. – nixnotwin Dec 05 '10 at 16:47
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    @Konrad: Of course double spacing is horrible, but sometimes people are required to do it. We don't know if that is the case here. So while your advice is excellent, it may not hurt to tone it down a little bit. – Harald Hanche-Olsen Dec 05 '10 at 17:07
  • @nixnotwin: Use 2\baselineskip for that. – Harald Hanche-Olsen Dec 05 '10 at 17:08
  • @Thorsten: I didn't know that package, thanks! – Willie Wong Dec 05 '10 at 22:47

1 Answers1

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As Thorsten alludes to above, the idea is to use the parskip package since it redefines list items and a couple other things to cope with the large increase in between each "paragraph". I wonder if it shouldn't redefine more, such as spacing around a figure, but I haven't investigated its limitations.

Unfortunately, the amount of space added between the paragraphs in parskip is fixed; here's how you'd change it:

\usepackage{setspace}
\doublespacing
\usepackage{parskip}
\parskip=2\baselineskip \advance\parskip by 0pt plus 2pt

The additional stretch will help to jiggle things around on the page in case you don't have an exact integer number of paragraph lines of text worth of content (e.g., there exists a table or figure on the page).

Will Robertson
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