[texhax] What can I about \\ added at par ends?

[Michael Barr]

I tried that and got mysterious error messages.  I don't know why.

Michael

On Fri, 22 Mar 2013, Bob Wilson wrote:

> Most text editors have global search and replace. I would recommend replacing \\<two newlines> with <two newlines>. This is probably the only option.
>
> HTH
> Bob
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Mar 22, 2013, at 2:25 PM, Michael Barr <barr at math.mcgill.ca> wrote:
>
>> I have an ms that is to be published in the online journal I do the tex editing for.  For reasons I don't want to go into, I cannot ask him to revise it; it was put into tex by a grad student, not by the author.  The grad student ended every paragraph with \\ followed by a blank line.  You can see the effect from this simple file:
>>
>> \documentclass{article}
>> \begin{document}
>> This is a test of what \\
>>
>> does to add to parskip\\
>>
>> and again
>>
>> And here it is without the\\
>>
>> \end{document}
>>
>> There are 1063 instances of \\ in the file and probably several dozen are actually appropriate, maybe a 100.  (This ms compiles to 170 pages.)  I am not about to go through it and take out the ones that shouldn't be there. One thing I tried was \parskip -5pt.  This helped but are a few instances where the student "forgot" to add the \\.  So is there any way to nullify the effect of \\ when it is followed by a blank line (or, presumably, a \par) but still has the correct effect otherwise?
>>
>> Michael
>>
>> --
>> The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in
>> moral philosophy--the search for a superior moral justification
>> for selfishness.  --J.K. Galbraith
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-- 
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in
moral philosophy--the search for a superior moral justification
for selfishness.  --J.K. Galbraith