# Unwanted right indent in document

Super noob here, so please forgive any blunders! :)

My problem is that in my document (example below), the paragraph starting from the second dingbat is getting indented automatically. I don't want this; I want all the left edges aligned perfectly. How can this be done?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{pifont} %For the very nice dingbats

\begin{document}

\section*{Elementary Algebra}

\ding{234} One amusing way to look at \textbf{irrational numbers} is to say that they don't behave rationally. The point is, given their non-terminating, non-repeating decimals, there's no sane' way to work with them!

\ding{234} Here are some elementary but easily forgotten (and highly useful) algebraic identities:

\begin{itemize}

\item $a^3 - b^3 = (a-b)(a^2+ab+b^2)$

\end{itemize}

\end{document}

• Shouldn't your message be entitled "Unwanted leftindent…? – Bernard Mar 11 '14 at 17:30
• Maybe \usepackage{parskip} does what you want? – vaettchen Mar 11 '14 at 17:32
• – Werner Mar 11 '14 at 17:37
• I think the right here is to think about what that is first and how do you really want it to behave. May be it's just two items (then the answer @Bernard provided is right) or may be you just want \paragraph{\ding{234}} in those two (and many more) cases. If none of them fits you, it's possible that you are really looking to the \usepackage{parskip}, as they already said. – Manuel Mar 11 '14 at 17:56

Either add \noindent before each \ding{234} (except the first: that would be useless), or set \parindent=0pt in your preamble – but you then should fix \parskip to a non zero value (say \smallskipamount for instance) so as to differentiate paragraphs.

You also could consider these paragraphs as items in a (1st level) itemize environment, load the enumitempackage and write:

    \documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{pifont} %For the very nice dingbats

\begin{document}

\section*{Elementary Algebra}
\begin{itemize}[label = \ding{234},wide, labelindent = 0pt]

\item One amusing way to look at \textbf{irrational numbers} is to say that they don't behave rationally. The point is, given their non-terminating, non-repeating decimals, there's no sane' way to work with them!

\item Here are some elementary but easily forgotten (and highly useful) algebraic identities:

\begin{itemize}[label = \textbullet, align = left,  labelindent = 1.5em, labelsep* = 0.5em,labelwidth = 1em,  leftmargin =! ,topsep = 0pt]
\item $a^3 - b^3 = (a-b)(a^2+ab+b^2)$
\item $a^3 + b^3 = (a + b)(a^2-ab+b^2)$
\end{itemize}

\end{itemize}

\end{document}


• It's possible that he is looking more for a \paragraph{\ding{234}}. By the way what is that math doing inside an itemize (the extra cool thing is the en-dash before the math itself)? May be $…$ is what he is looking for. – Manuel Mar 11 '14 at 17:57
• @Manuel: Well, maybe but she/he'll should say so in such a case. As for the endash that looks like a minus sign, I hadn't noticed. I suppose it' used by default for second-level items. I changed it to a bullet, and slightly modified the vertical spacing. – Bernard Mar 11 '14 at 18:39
• One more: a minipage (by default \parindent=0pt) – Fran Mar 11 '14 at 19:23
• @Fran: It's a solution, but there's a problem with page breaks. – Bernard Mar 11 '14 at 20:13
• @Bernard Very nice! And makes it look very neat! :-) – ankush981 Mar 12 '14 at 14:53