LaTeX New Paragraph and Line Break: Blank Lines, \\, \newline and Spacing

LaTeX treats paragraphs and lines differently from a word processor. Pressing Enter once does nothing, and the command people reach for first, \\, is meant for tables and poetry rather than for ending paragraphs.

Start a new paragraph

A blank line in the source ends a paragraph. \par does the same thing and is useful inside macros. A single line break in the source is just a space.

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
This is the first paragraph.
This sentence is still in the first paragraph.

This is the second paragraph, indented by default.
\end{document}

The first paragraph after a heading is not indented in English typesetting. To indent it as well, load the indentfirst package. To suppress the indent of one paragraph, start it with \noindent.

Space between paragraphs instead of indents

Many reports and theses use a blank line between paragraphs and no indent. Load the parskip package rather than setting \parskip by hand, because parskip also fixes the spacing of lists and the table of contents:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{parskip}
\begin{document}
First paragraph.

Second paragraph, separated by space and not indented.
\end{document}

To change the indent size instead, use \setlength{\parindent}{1.5em}.

Break a line inside a paragraph

\\ and \newline end the line without starting a new paragraph. The next line is not indented. \\[6pt] adds extra space after the break, and \\* prevents a page break at that point.

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\noindent Department of Medicine\\
University of Somewhere\\[6pt]
Corresponding author: A. Author
\end{document}

\linebreak is different: it breaks the line but keeps it justified, which stretches the spaces across the full width. It is rarely what you want.

Two common errors

"Underfull \hbox (badness 10000)" usually means a paragraph ends with \\ followed by a blank line. LaTeX makes an empty line out of the break. Remove the \\ and let the blank line end the paragraph.

"There’s no line here to end" means \\ appears where no line has started, for example straight after a blank line or at the start of a section. If you wanted vertical space, use \vspace{...} instead.

Add vertical space

Use \smallskip, \medskip and \bigskip for standard gaps, or \vspace{1cm} for a set amount. At the top of a page \vspace is dropped; \vspace* keeps it. Repeated \\ or empty lines are the usual sign that one of these was needed.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I start a new paragraph in LaTeX?

Leave a blank line in the source, or write \par.

What is the difference between \\ and \newline?

In normal text they do the same thing: break the line without a new paragraph. \\ also takes an optional space argument, as in \\[6pt], and is the row separator in tables.

How do I remove paragraph indentation in LaTeX?

Use \noindent for one paragraph, or \setlength{\parindent}{0pt} for all of them. To replace indents with space between paragraphs, load parskip.

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