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I'm writing my Ph.D. thesis and I'm using a format that a colleague of mine gave me. I noticed a strange situation: there are all around blocks of text that I separate with \\ only. Anyway, on pdf output, I get that some newline are larger than others.

For example, this one has a normal newline:

...individuals' satisfaction degree. \\

A pioneering and well-known model depicting such situation...

while this other one has a very large newline (wrong or unwanted behavior):

...even though they have been conceived in different ways.\\

Even though there is a plenty of works studying ...

These two newlines are defined in the same ways. The code you see is exactly a copy-and-paste from my tex. I don't know where to start in order to understand what I'm doing wrongly.

Addition 1 Hereafter you find the master tex file:

\documentclass[12pt,makeidx]{phdthesis}

\usepackage{a4wide}
\usepackage{appendix}
\usepackage{cite}

\usepackage{avant}

\usepackage{makeidx}  
\makeindex


\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{fancyheadings}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{amsfonts}
\usepackage{amstext}
\usepackage{amsmath}    
\usepackage{graphicx}   
\usepackage{amsthm}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{enumitem}



%%% General page formatting %%%%
\addtolength{\textwidth}{-0.6in} %-0.6
\addtolength{\evensidemargin}{0.3in} %0.3
\addtolength{\oddsidemargin}{0.3in} %0.3

%\addtolength{\topmargin}{1.00in}
%\addtolength{\textheight}{2.00in}

\renewcommand{\textfraction}{0.01}
\renewcommand{\topfraction}{0.99}
\renewcommand{\floatpagefraction}{0.99}
\renewcommand{\bottomfraction}{0.99}
\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1.2} 


\newcommand{\Complex}{\mathbb{C}}
\newcommand{\Real}{\mathbb{R}}
\newcommand{\Integer}{\mathbb{Z}}
\newcommand{\Natural}{\mathbb{N}}
\newcommand{\Endproof}{$\hfill\square$}
\newcommand{\needcite}{{\color{red}[\textbf{Citation needed}]}}
\newcommand{\bs}[1]{\boldsymbol{#1}}
\newcommand{\todo}[1]{{\color{red}[\textbf{TODO: }#1]}}
\newcommand{\edited}{\color{MidnightBlue}}


\newtheorem{Theorem}{Theorem}
\newtheorem{Corollary}{Corollary}

\begin{document}
\pagestyle{fancyplain}
\pagenumbering{roman}


%% create the table of contents
\cleardoublepage
\lhead[]{\fancyplain{}{\rightmark}}
\chead[\fancyplain{}{}]{\fancyplain{}{}}
\rhead[\fancyplain{}{\leftmark}]{\fancyplain{}{}}
%\rhead[\fancyplain{}{}]{\fancyplain{}{}}
%\lhead[\fancyplain{}{}]{\fancyplain{}{}}
\begin{center}
{\huge My thesis}
\end{center}

\tableofcontents
\include{src/lop} % list of publications of author
\cleardoublepage

\newcommand{\publ}{}

\pagestyle{fancyplain}
%\setlength{\headrulewidth}{0.3pt}
%\setlength{\footrulewidth}{0.0pt}
%\setlength{\plainfootrulewidth}{0.0pt}
%\setlength{\plainheadrulewidth}{0pt}
\renewcommand{\sectionmark}[1]{\markright{\it \thesection.\ #1}}
\renewcommand{\chaptermark}[1]{\markboth{\it \thechapter.\ #1}{}}
\lhead[\thepage]{\fancyplain{\publ}{\rightmark}}
\chead[\fancyplain{}{}]{\fancyplain{}{}}
\rhead[\fancyplain{}{\leftmark}]{\fancyplain{}{\thepage}}
\lfoot[]{} \cfoot[]{} \rfoot[]{}
%------------------------------


\include{src/intro}
\include{src/game/game}
%\include{src/eeg} 
%\include{src/bio/bio} 


%% Include the bibliography
%\renewcommand{\publ}{}
\cleardoublepage
\small
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Bibliografy}
%\bibliography{Biblio_PhDThesis}
\include{src/biblio}

%% Include the index
\cleardoublepage
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Index}
\printindex

\end{document}
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  • 5
    Do not use \\ to end a paragraph. That is not its purpose. If you are referring to "blank" vertical space between paragraphs, there are a number of reasons why this might occur and there are ways to solve it. But it is impossible to do so reliably before you give us some complete, but minimal code that demonstrates the problem.
    – jon
    Mar 29, 2015 at 18:56
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    Thanks for posting your file, but the trouble is that none of us can compile that because we don't have the files you are including - if you want assistance here, then what you need to do is to limit the example to only the code required for your issue to appear. You can have a look at this guide for how to prune your code for this purpose.
    – Thruston
    Mar 29, 2015 at 19:27
  • 2
    I think you're seeing the same problem as tex.stackexchange.com/questions/10743/…. In other words, try adding \raggedbottom to the preamble. Mar 29, 2015 at 21:51
  • 2
    Please add a minimal example here. Questions should be generally useful and should continue to help future users, even if the contents of links disappears or is modified. For that reason, questions should be self-contained - they should not rely on information hosted on external sites.
    – cfr
    Mar 29, 2015 at 22:22
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    Your log file has several lines Underfull \hbox (badness 10000) in paragraph at lines 8--20 note 10000 is infinitely bad these are probably all generated by the misuse of \\ and it has one Underfull \vbox (badness 10000) has occurred while \output is active [] which means that one vertical box can't be set correctly and will be over-stretched. Mar 30, 2015 at 0:12

1 Answer 1

6

Never end a paragraph with \\ it forces a line break after the last word of the paragraph producing an empty line that messes up the space and produces

Underfull \hbox (badness 10000) in paragraph at lines...

in the log. Note that 10000 is infinitely bad. TeX is telling you that the spacing in this document has been forced to be as bad as it measures.

If you have large unbreakable boxes in your text you may prefer \raggedbottom rather than \flushbottom where TeX tries to keep the baseline of the bottom row of each page at the same point, so may have to stretch white space to achieve that, but without an example it is hard to be sure. But first you need to remove the \\ commands as it is impossible to get correct spacing with that markup.

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