Master/texmf-doc/doc/english/FAQ-en/html/FAQ-parskip.html


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<head>
<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label parskip</title>
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<h3>Zero paragraph indent</h3>
<p>The conventional way of typesetting running text has no separation
between paragraphs, and the first line of each paragraph in a block of
text indented.
<p>In contrast, one common convention for typewritten text was to have no
indentation of paragraphs; such a style is often required for
&ldquo;brutalist&rdquo; publications such as technical manuals, and in styles
that hanker after typewritten manuscripts, such as
officially-specified dissertation formats.
<p>Anyone can see, after no more than a moment&rsquo;s thought, that if the
paragraph indent is zero, the paragraphs must be separated by blank
space: otherwise it is sometimes going to be impossible to see the
breaks between paragraphs.
<p>The simple-minded approach to zero paragraph indentation is thus:
<pre>
  \setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
  \setlength{\parskip}{\baselineskip}
</pre>
and in the very simplest text, it&rsquo;s a fine solution.
<p>However, the non-zero <code>\</code><code>parskip</code> interferes with lists and the like,
and the result looks pretty awful.  The <i>parskip</i> package
patches things up to look reasonable; it&rsquo;s not perfect, but it deals
with most problems.
<p>The Netherlands Users&rsquo; Group&rsquo;s set of classes includes an
<i>article</i> equivalent (<i>artikel3</i>) and a <i>report</i>
equivalent (<i>rapport3</i>) whose design incorporates zero paragraph
indent and non-zero paragraph skip.
<dl>
<dt><tt><i>NTG classes</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/ntgclass.zip">macros/latex/contrib/ntgclass</a> (<a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/ntgclass.tar.gz">gzipped tar</a>, <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/ntgclass/">browse</a>)
<dt><tt><i>parskip.sty</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/misc/parskip.sty">macros/latex/contrib/misc/parskip.sty</a>
</dl>
<p><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=parskip">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=parskip</a>
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