# Large Brackets Make Line Breaks too Small

\documentclass[10pt,letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{mathtools}
\usepackage{amsfonts}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{parskip}
\usepackage[left=2cm,right=2cm,top=2cm,bottom=2cm]{geometry}
\begin{document}
$\text{tr }(PQ)=\displaystyle\sum_{i=i}^{n}\sum_{j=1}^m \left[\displaystyle\prod_{i=i}^{n}\prod_{j=1}^m\ \left(p_{ij}q_{ij}\right)\right] \\\text{tr }(QP)=\displaystyle\sum_{i=i}^{n}\sum_{j=1}^m \left[\displaystyle\prod_{i=i}^{n}\prod_{j=1}^m \left(q_{ij}p_{ij}\right)\right]$
\end{document}


When I use something like this, the output looks nice, but the breaks between lines look too small due to the size of \left[ and \right]:

Is there a way to add a bit of space between these lines, so \left[ and \right] don't look like they are almost touching?

• Welcome to TeX.SX! Please add a minimal working example that takes the form \documentclass{...}\usepackage{....}\begin{document}...\end{document}. If possible, it should compile and have the minimum amount of code needed to illustrate your problem. This makes it much easier for people to help you - and much more likely that they will! – Andrew May 3 '15 at 5:39

First, you need at most \displaystyle per line but you are probably better off using $...$ or an equation environment.

Secondly, to get the spacing right around operators rather than using \text it is better to use

\DeclareMathOperator{\tr}{tr}

from the amsmath package. Next, I suspect that what you really want here is to put everything into an alignment enviroment such as the align* environment to give:

Notice that the &'s tell latex where to align the two equations.

Finally, and this is a personal preference, I don't like using \left...\right as I think that the operators are usually too large. Instead I use the amsmath \big, \bigg, \Big, \Bigg operators. Here is the complete code.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\DeclareMathOperator{\tr}{tr}
\begin{document}

\begin{align*}
\tr(PQ)&=\sum_{i=i}^{n}\sum_{j=1}^m
\Big[\prod_{i=i}^{n}\prod_{j=1}^m\ p_{ij}q_{ij}\Big]\\
\tr(QP)&=\sum_{i=i}^{n}\sum_{j=1}^m
\Big[\prod_{i=i}^{n}\prod_{j=1}^m q_{ij}p_{ij}\Big]
\end{align*}

\end{document}

• \Bigl[ and \Bigr], not just \Big. You may also mention \\[<length>] – egreg May 3 '15 at 11:09