Paragraph indentation in a list

Question

I'm trying to use LaTeX to produce my homework assignments. They're in the form of answering a question sheet, so the answers are formatted in a similar way to the questions, i.e.

1. (a) foo
   (b) foo
   (c) foo
2. foo

I've been answering my questions using enumerative lists. Each \item has a fair number of paragraphs. My problem is that the paragraphs aren't indenting in the usual way by separating them with a blank line. They end up looking like:

Foobar.
Foobar.
Foobar.

I ideally want the first paragraph to have no indentation at the beginning but the subsequent paragraphs to have the first line indented by a standard width. Is there a way to do what I want? If not, is there an easier method for doing my assignments where my answers match the format that the questions are laid out in?

Thanks :-)

Answer 1

The enumerate environment removes the paragraph indentation, but you may restore that. Afterwards the paragraphs within enumerate would be indented, but not the first one, like desired. For example, create a myenumerate environment and use this instead:

\newenvironment{myenumerate}{%
  \edef\backupindent{\the\parindent}%
  \enumerate%
  \setlength{\parindent}{\backupindent}%
}{\endenumerate}

It could be done even easier using the enumitem package:

\usepackage{enumitem}
\setenumerate{listparindent=\parindent}

For your convenience, here's a complete example. It uses the first redefiniton, but the two enumitem lines (and the enumerate environment) would give the same result:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
%
\newenvironment{myenumerate}{%
  \edef\backupindent{\the\parindent}%
  \enumerate%
  \setlength{\parindent}{\backupindent}%
}{\endenumerate}

%
\begin{document}
\begin{myenumerate}
\item
  \begin{myenumerate}
    \item \blindtext

         \blindtext
    \item \blindtext
  \end{myenumerate}
\end{myenumerate}
\end{document}

I recommend to use the enumitem package, it offers many further features for customizing lists.