How to prevent vertical spacing accumulation?

Question

By "spacing accumulation", I mean the resulting spacing when two \vspace{} commands meet.

For example, let's say you set an after-skip for the figure environment and a before-skip for a chapter section. When these two skips meet, they will produce a double-spacing.

I know \vspace{} will always discard the skip at the start of the page. This is not the issue here.

chapter headings normally prevent floats above, and environments use \addvspace which should prevent build up — David Carlisle, Nov 06 '23 at 09:02

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 06 '23 at 09:05

You want \addvspace which avoids stacking. However, what you describe (figure before chapter heading) shouldn't happen, unless you are doing something very evil in the background.

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{minipage}[t]{2cm}
X\dotfill X
\vspace{3cm}
\vspace{2cm}
X\dotfill X
\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}[t]{2cm}
X\dotfill X
\addvspace{3cm}
\addvspace{2cm}
X\dotfill X
\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}[t]{2cm}
X\dotfill X
\vspace{3cm}
X\dotfill X
\end{minipage}
\end{document}

How to prevent vertical spacing accumulation?

1 Answers1