What does + before \\ do?

Question

In Grätzer's More Math Into LaTeX, 5th Edition, the chapter on books shows a master document that includes at its end the following lines:

\appendix+\\
\include{AppendixA}%Math symbol tables+\\
... +\\
\backmatter+\\
\printindex+\\
\end{document}+\\[8pt]

What is the purpose of the +\\ there?

Here is an extract of the above section from the book, with the +\\ highlighted:

I think it's a leftover of some formatting instruction; it seems that some coding went wrong. — egreg, Jul 04 '16 at 18:05

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:34

5

There is no logical reason why this should be part of the code, especially since anything after \end{document} is disregarded, making

\end{document}+\\[8pt]

seem arbitrarily misplaced.

The assumption is that this may be an artifact from editing, as it does not exist in the 4th edition.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:34

Community

answered Jul 05 '16 at 15:24

Werner

To be more precise, all +\\ are to be removed. For instance, \appendix should never be followed by \\ (and \\ is not recommended in the other places it appears). – egreg Jul 05 '16 at 15:32

1 Answers1