single line - no indentation break before and after

Question

What's the easiest way to have a line not indented and with a break before and after?

Example:

Following the list of ingredients:

• carrots
• ...

The Latex-Code would be:

Following the list of ingredients:

\begin{enumerate}
    \item carrots
    \item ...
\end{enumerate}

By default the line would be indented and without preceeding line break.

Any suggestions for a short-macro to have single lines?

I sometimes use

\ \\ Following the list of ingredients:

Answer 1

Update Based on comments

I'd suggest using \bigskip, \medskip or \smallskip along with \noindent. This will allow you to control the amount of spacing you want. Since you were looking for a \shortmacro I have added that as well. Using a macro is a good ideas as that help to ensure that your spacing in these kinds of situations is consistent, and allows you to adjust all the sapcing in one spot.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\newcommand{\shortmacro}{\bigskip\noindent}%
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]
%
\shortmacro Following the list of ingredients:
%
\begin{itemize}[align=left]
    \item carrots
    \item ...
\end{itemize}
\end{document}

The \lipsum package as added just to include some dummy text so that we could see the spacing.

Answer 2

If you're referring to the line Following the list of ingredients: that you want to have

• no indent; and
• a break before

you can do the following:

• Prefix the line with \noindent. This avoids the paragraph indent \parindent for that specific paragraph.
• Add a blank line before the sentence so TeX will see it as a new paragraph. This inserts a vertical skip between the two paragraphs of size \parskip. Depending on your document class, this may be virtually unnoticeable. You can modify this value using \setlength{\parskip}{<len> where <len> is any recognized length unit.

The (very small) parskip package actually provides all of these requirements. Or, if you're interested, view the package parskip.sty file.

Answer 3

I suspect your problem is that you don't want a paragraph break between your text and list. TeX treats a blank line as a 'new paragraph' mark. So try

Following the list of ingredients:
\begin{enumerate}
    \item carrots
    \item ...
\end{enumerate}

or 'comment out' the extra line

Following the list of ingredients:
%
\begin{enumerate}
    \item carrots
    \item ...
\end{enumerate}

as TeX will then treat it as 'not there'.