Add paragraph styling only in certain sections

Question

I am writing my Masters thesis in LaTeX. I'm using the university template which is quite complex so I haven't tweaked it much as I'm new to LaTeX. My problem is that the paragraph style here seems to be the default one for latex that uses indentations without any vertical spacing between the paragraphs. I like my paragraphs to not have indents but be separated with some spaces between them. So, I inserted the following in the preamble.

\setlength{\parindent}{0.0in}
\setlength{\parskip}{0.1in}

It worked alright but I ran into an unexpected problem. It kind of screwed my Abstract pages, TOC etc which are defined in the sty file that I don't want to mess around with. So, I would like for this style to occur only from my Introduction "section" and beyond not in the frontmatter. How can I have only the sections and subsections etc have this style without touching that on the other parts like abstract page, preface, TOC, reference etc.

Answer 1

@sfactor - I don't know your thesis style, of course, but in most the following will work:

\documentclass{yourthesisclass}
\author{moi}
\title{Epigraphy Upon Stalagmites In Pre-Historic Europe}
\date{\today}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\tableofcontents
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
\setlength{\parskip}{0.1in}
\include{thewholethesis}
\end{document}

So, the basic idea is to reset them after the frontmatter. You can do it in the text, no problem.

BTW, you can also go:

\parindent0pt
\parskip0.1in

in the same place.....