The only purpose of the figure
environment is to take its content out of the main document flow, so that it can be inserted later, if you need an image mid-paragraph, you could use \includegraphcs
directly in the text. So you could ask the question without the figure
there at all.
The following shows four possible markup styles for the sentence
# This is an example paragraph... blah...blah... and then blah...blah...
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
1 This is an example paragraph... blah...blah... and then blah...blah...
2 This is an example paragraph... blah...blah...
and then blah...blah...
3 This is an example paragraph... blah...blah...
%
%
and then blah...blah...
4 This is an example paragraph... blah...blah...
%
{}
%
and then blah...blah...
\end{document}
Note that the first three are equivalent, as comments are ignored, and ends of lines are treated as spaces. The fourth is usually a markup error, as it introduces a double word space before and
.
You can insert a figure
environment into the sentence in any of these styles, the style you show is essentially equivalent to 4, except that unlike {}
, the figure
environment takes special precautions if it has a space before and after the environment and removes the space before.
I think that 1 is the most natural markup for a sentence so in the (somewhat rare) cases where you need to specify a figure callout mid-sentence I would use
This is an example paragraph... blah...blah...\begin{figure}
...
\end{figure} and then blah...blah...
Which highlights its mid-sentence nature.
Normally it is clearer to specify figures between paragraphs, when you can use blank lines around the figure
environment markup.