Should I leave LaTeX decide the vertical height of the space above a text paragraph?

Question

In my document, above a text paragraph, there are objects of many possibilities: \end{figure}, \end{align*}, $$, \end{itemize}, end{enumerate}, etc... It seems that visually on the final pdf, it does not leave space of same height before the text paragraph. So I have to try several \\ or add black line in my .tex to get a consistent layout...

This manual adjustment confuses me, is there any elegant way to determine the space of certain height? What do you put usually after a end{...} before a text paragraph?

Answer 1

I expect you don't use \raggedbottom but \flushbottom (which depending on your document class is enabled by default). The effect is, that TeX adjusts the spaces between your paragraphs and environments.

Also read this question: Second page of list of figures: spacing too large

Answer 2

There are no "text paragraphs", only paragraphs and items possibly included in paragraphs. Although it may be surprising at first, displayed equations (align) and lists (itemize, enumerate) can be a part of paragraphs. (They may also start and/or end a paragraph -- this is denoted by adding a blank line in the source.) And floats (figure), though not included in paragraphs, do not split the text before and after them into separate paragraphs -- floats are simply not part of the running text.

So yes, don't add random line breaks to create a layout you perceive as "consistent". Let LaTeX deal with vertical spacing.