Anonymous division in memoir with small caps

Question

I want to create "anonymous divisions" -- breaks in the text that do not have their own section titles. I'm using the memoir class, and it provides \plainbreak{} and \fancybreak{} for this purpose. But they don't do what I want: \plainbreak does not indicate a new division is started, and \fancybreak adds extra text. I'd like to indicate the new division by setting the first couple of words in small caps. Like this:

end of paragraph, followed by a couple of empty lines.


BEGINNING OF the new division, not indented, starting with small caps.

I've seen this in many books, and I'm surprised memoir does not provide it.

To be sure, I can achieve what I want with this:

\plainbreak{1}

\textsc{Beginning of} the new division...

But this is awkward, and not the LaTeX way (what if I want to change the spacing and font after creating dozens of these divisions?). I then thought I should be able to simply use \paragraph with:

\setparaheadstyle{\normalsize\scshape}

But this leaves extra horizontal space after the \paragraph "title":

end of paragraph, followed by a couple of empty lines.


BEGINNING OF   the new division, but with extra space.

I found the \setafterparaskip{} command, but I don't know how to tell it to use interword spacing after \paragraph{}. E.g., \setafterparaskip{\spaceskip} does not work.

It's difficult to search for \paragraph{}, since most of the results discuss plain paragraphs, not the heading.

What is the best way to achieve what I want?

EDIT: there is of course a brute force method that does what I want:

\renewcommand*{\paragraph}[1]{\plainbreak{1}\textsc{#1}}

Are there any better ways? Might this have any unexpected side-effects?

Answer 1

Limitation: It expects to find at least two more spaces in the input stream.

If you wish something that actually replaces \plainbreak, maybe this:

\documentclass{memoir}
\renewcommand\plainbreak[1]{\par\vspace{#1\baselineskip}\Plainbreakaux}
\long\def\Plainbreakaux#1 #2 #3 {{\let\par\relax\noindent\scshape#2 #3} }
\begin{document}
\noindent end of paragraph, followed by a couple of empty lines.\plainbreak{1}


Beginning of the new division, not indented, starting with small caps.\plainbreak{2}

Also a new division\plainbreak{1}

A final division.

A regular paragraph boundary (indented).
\end{document}

Answer 2

How about the example below. I added microtype to get letter spacing on the small caps (this is adjustable). The size of space is taken from this answer: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/229642/3929

\documentclass[a4paper]{memoir}
\usepackage{microtype}
\setparaheadstyle{\normalsize\scshape\lsstyle}
\makeatletter
\normalfont
\@tempdima=\the\fontdimen2\font
\setafterparaskip{-\@tempdima} 
\makeatother
\begin{document}

end of paragraph, followed by a couple of empty lines.


\paragraph{Beginning of} the new division, not indented, starting with
small caps.

\end{document}