Problems with \parskip

Question

I have some problems with the usage of the \parskip package. For me it seems to have no effect on my document. I am using \usepackage{parskip} but there is no space between two paragraphs. If I do this for example

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper,twoside]{article}
\raggedbottom
\usepackage{parskip}
\usepackage[onehalfspacing]{setspace}
\begin{document}
some text

some text\par
some text\\
some text
\end{document}

the output will be four identical lines with no space between. I also tried to use the package as \usepackage[indent]{parskip} what should result in an indent at every new paragraph, but it also has no effect to the document. Are there any further options I don't used or any problems with some other packages?

The option \par\smallskip works exactly how it should in the whole document.

Answer 1

There is additional space between paragraphs in your example

Note the first two spaces are bigger than than the third.

What is true is that setspace package does not scale parskip by the same factor as it scales baselineskip, so if you increase the baseline spacing the paragraph spacing stays the same and is visually less noticeable.

Code to scale \parskip is in the package but not active in latex2e.

If you use \usepackage[indent]{parskip} in your example, then you get

showing indented paragraphs, with just the last line of the final two-line paragraph being set flush to the left margin. You say this did not work but you do not show the output you got?

Answer 2

There is more space with \usepackage{parskip} or \usepackage[indent]{parskip}—presumably, you didn't look closely enough. Here is a side by side comparison of this on the left:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
%\raggedbottom won't change anything for a single page
\usepackage[indent]{parskip}
\usepackage[onehalfspacing]{setspace}

\begin{document}
some text

some text\par
some text\\
some text
\end{document}

and on the right, the same with the \usepackage[indent]{parskip} line commented out:

Answer 3

I think I found the problem: I used a \raggedright at the beginning of the document what seems to prevent the indent and also the space between paragraphs. When I remove the \raggedright and use a \begin{center} and \end{center} in replacement for \centering there are no more problems.