[texhax] Strange formatting.

[Barbara Beeton]

    This is something I have never seen with LaTex before.  If you look at the
    .pdf file, you see that the line height for the second line (and possibly
    the first as well) is smaller than the others.  This the source:

    \documentclass[11pt,a5paper]{article}

    \usepackage{geometry}
    \geometry{a4paper,tmargin=3cm,bmargin=3cm,lmargin=2.5cm,rmargin=2cm}
    \renewcommand\familydefault{ppl}
    \begin{document}
    \Huge

    Dear brothers: I think that God has made us apostles the most abject of
    mankind.  We experience hunger and thirst, we are naked, we are roughly
    handled, and we have no fixed abode ... They curse us and we bless.  They
    persecute us and we suffer it ... They treat us as the scum of the earth,
    the dregs of humanity ... to this very day.
    \normalsize

    \end{document}

i've already seen phil taylor's message
about descenders, but the cause is more
direct than that.  (la)tex uses whatever
baseline is in effect at a paragraph
break for the previous paragraph.  and
\normalsize is part of that paragraph.

add a blank line before \normalsize.

this effect can also be seen when text
is interrupted by a math display which
is set as \small, for example

   xxx\\
   xxx
   {\small
   \[ x + y = z \]
   }
   xxx

the part of the text above the display
will have narrower baselines than what
comes after the display (unless that too
is interrupted by a size change).  it's
amazing how many authors of math papers
(or submissions to tugboat) don't notice
that.
						-- bb