4

Sorry for this silly question, but why does LaTeX indent the very beginning paragraph?

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\begin{abstract}

Here \LaTeX{} indents this paragraph.

\end{abstract}

It does this one too. \LaTeX{} does not indent first paragraphs, but why these two?

\section{TEXT}

This one is not indented as usual.

\end{document}

What is the internal LaTeX standard?

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  • At least in academic texts is not usual start a text without a heading, so for this special case the best is simply use \noident. Also you can change \parindent everywhere (e.g. \setlength\parindent{0pt} foo\par \setlength\parindent{1em} ...). As the answer pointed \parindent can be modified by document class, but also by packages (parskip, babel) but you actually showed the "standard" of the standard article: indent always except after a header, ... or a itemize list not ended by blank line (or an enumerate list, but not in a raw list environment). – Fran Jun 28 at 9:22
7

Paragraph indentation is suppressed after section headings and not anywhere else by default. Some document class may define abstract to suppress indentation some may not, it is a choice of that class author. LaTeX itself (in the format) does not define an abstract environment at all so there can be no built in default here.

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