Leaving a blank line leads to a huge skip

Question

in my LaTeX report, I would like to separate paragraphs by a small vertical blank space. I'm doing that by typing

End of the old paragraph. \newline

New paragraph goes here.

This worked well for most of the cases. However, there is one particular chapter where this procedure produces extremely large vertical blank spaces.

The chapter looks like this:

\begin{figure}[ht]
% Figure with subfigures
\end{figure}

First paragraph. \newline

Second paragraph. \newline

Third paragraph. \newline

Fourth paragraph.

However, this results in rediculously large blank spaces. How can I fix this? I have the feeling that this is not the best approach to divide paragraphs. What is the "optimum" way to do it? I do not want a space at the beginning of a paragraph.

Answer 1

You don't have to manually typeout the \newline command. LaTeX and TeX related systems automatically consider a blank line as an end of a paragraph. you have extra space because you force a line break and then also break a paragraph.

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
First paragraph. 

Second paragraph. 

Third paragraph. 

Fourth paragraph.
\end{document}

gives out:

The effect is more apparent with some lines of text

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
First paragraph. First paragraph. First paragraph. First paragraph. First paragraph. First paragraph. First paragraph. First paragraph. 

Second paragraph. Second paragraph. Second paragraph. Second paragraph. Second paragraph. Second paragraph. Second paragraph. Second paragraph. Second paragraph. Second paragraph. Second paragraph. 

Third paragraph. Third paragraph. Third paragraph. Third paragraph. Third paragraph. Third paragraph. Third paragraph. Third paragraph. Third paragraph. Third paragraph. 

Fourth paragraph.
\end{document}

You could also manually specify an extra skip to be inserted (suitable for occasional spacings, not systematic), with smallskip medskip or bigskip ie

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
First paragraph. \medskip

Second paragraph. \smallskip

Third paragraph. \bigskip

Fourth paragraph.
\end{document}

which gives:

Also, as Steven B. Segletes suggests, you could define, in your preamble, the parskip to be a specific amount,ie \parskip=1ex\relax