[texhax] Pretty easy Question about \vspace and \paragraph

Donald Arseneau asnd at triumf.ca
Wed Aug 29 10:58:23 CEST 2012


Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de> writes:

> On 2012-08-29 at 10:21:02 +0900, Vladimir Lomov wrote:
> 
>  > > \paragraph{Hello} this is a paragraph\\
>  > > \vspace{4mm}
>  > > something here\\
> 
> You can use \vspace only in vertical mode, i.e. between paragraphs.
> 
> Regarding \vspace*, Vladimir, please read the documentation yourself.

*Sigh*  Both answers are wrong!

There are some correct aspects, like the question whether you are 
trying to end all paragraphs (or lines) with \\ when you should normally
use a blank line to end a paragraph and let TeX find the line breaks within
a paragraph.  And yes, you should read the documentation where you will
also find this answer...

To input your line-break with spacing, use the capability of \\, and don't
use \vspace:

This is a special line\\[4mm]

So what about \vspace?  Between paragraphs ("in vertical mode") \vspace inserts 
its space immediately, so inserting a blank line does put the vspace where you 
want, but it also changes other aspects of the typesetting.  Inside a paragraph,
\vspace puts its space below the current line.  In what you have tried, the 
\vspace occurs at the beginning of the line "something here", so the 4mm space
occurs after that line.  Therefore, if you insist on using \vspace, it would be

This is a special line\vspace{4mm}\\

The variant \vspace* works the same way, except that it tells not to break
the page there.  It is like the pair \nopagebreak\vspace.



Donald Arseneau                          asnd at triumf.ca


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