Hspace*

[Curtis Boykins]

IfLaTeX decides to break between lines at a point in the documentwhere an \hspace is specified, then no whitespace is produced. To ensure that white space is producedeven at points in the document where line breaking takes place, oneshould replace \hspace by \hspace*

To produce (vertical) blank space between paragraphs, use\vspace, followed by the length of the blank spaceenclosed within braces. Thus to obtainone should typeThis is the first paragraph of some text. It isseparated from the second paragraph by a vertical skip of10 millimetres.\vspace10 mmThis is the second paragraph.If LaTeX decides to introduce at a point in the documentwhere a \vspace is specified, then no whitespace is produced. To ensure that white space is producedeven at points in the document where page breaking takes place, oneshould replace \vspace by \vspace*

We now describe certain features of LaTeX relating to blank spacesand paragraph indentation which will improve the appearanceof the final document. Experienced users of LaTeX will improvethe appearance of their documents if they bear these remarks in mind.

First note that, as a general rule, you should never puta blank space after a left parenthesis or before a rightparenthesis. If you were to put a blank space in theseplaces, then you run the risk that LaTeX might start anew line immediately after the left parenthesis or beforethe right parenthesis, leaving the parenthesis marooned atthe beginning or end of a line.

The rule adopted by LaTeX is to regard a period (full stop) asthe end of a sentence if it is preceded by a lowercase letter.If the period is preceded by an uppercase letter thenLaTeX assumes that it is not a full stop but follows theinitials of somebody's name.

This works very well in most cases. HoweverLaTeX occasionally gets things wrong. This happens witha number of common abbreviations (as in `Mr.\ Smith' orin `etc.'), and, in particular, in the names ofjournals given in abbreviated form (e.g.,`Proc.\ Amer.\ Math.\ Soc.'). The way to overcome thisproblem is to put a backslash before the blank space inquestion. Thus we should typeMr.\ Smithetc.\ andProc.\ Amer.\ Math.\ Soc.

LaTeX will automatically indent paragraphs (with theexception of the first paragraph of a new section). Onecan prevent LaTeX from indenting a paragraph though bybeginning the paragraph with the control sequence\noindent. Thus one obtainsby typing\noindentThis is the beginning of a paragraph which is notindented in the usual way. This has been achievedby placing an appropriate control sequence at thebeginning of the paragraph.

Spaces (glues and kerns) disappear after line breaks by rule; by the same rule, line breaks can happen only at the "left edge" of a space. Moreover, if one says \hspace1cm\hspace1cm, the first \hspace is a feasible break point, but not the second one.

\hskip 0pt plus 0pt minus 0pt is inserted to avoid possible problems due to the peculiar syntax of the primitive \hskip; it won't be a feasible break point, because it's preceded by a discardable item;

(where the rules represent the \hspace*... commands; they won't be printed by this command, I used them just to show the effect). You can see that the space after \blank... is not used as break point.

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