Occasional gap between paragraphs, no indent on first para

Question

In LaTeX I'm using memoir class. I want to break long passages into logical units with some white inter-paragraph space. \medskip etc. indents the first subsequent paragraph - I want it unindented, as paragraphs are when starting a section. Can anyone advise? Thank you.

Answer 1

Using \noindent removes the indent (of length \parindent) from a single paragraph and requires manual usage at every paragraph. To void the paragraph indent altogether, use

\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}

in your document preamble, or at the start of your document (after \begin{document}).

---

If you're after an automated approach to have some paragraphs not indented after placing a \medskip, you should define your own \medskipnoindent macro (defined as \medskip\noindent) that does exactly that. Here's a minimal example showing this:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
\newcommand{\medskipnoindent}{\medskip\noindent}%
\begin{document}
\section{A section}
\lipsum[1] \medskip
\lipsum[2] \medskipnoindent
\lipsum[3]
\end{document}

The above example has a standard inter-paragraph skip. If you want to remove this, you could use \setlength{\parskip}{0pt}. Regardless, for any \parskip or \parindent-related modifications, consider using the parskip package.

Answer 2

Try starting the paragraph with \noindent.

Answer 3

I'll make this an answer instead. Try \fancybreak{}