\centering (LaTeX2e unofficial reference manual (November 2018))

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#### 8.3.1 `\centering`

Synopsis:

    {\centering ... }

or

    \begin{group}
      \centering ...
    \end{group}

Center the material in its scope. It is most often used inside an environment such as `figure`, or in a `parbox`.

This example’s `\centering` declaration causes the graphic to be horizontally centered.

    \begin{figure}
      \centering
      \includegraphics[width=0.6\textwidth]{ctan_lion.png}
      \caption{CTAN Lion}  \label{fig:CTANLion}
    \end{figure}

The scope of this `\centering` ends with the `\end{figure}`.

Unlike the `center` environment, the `\centering` command does not add vertical space above and below the text. That’s its advantage in the above example; there is not an excess of space.

It also does not start a new paragraph; it simply changes how LaTeX formats paragraph units. If `ww {\centering xx \\ yy} zz` is surrounded by blank lines then LaTeX will create a paragraph whose first line ‘`ww xx`’ is centered and whose second line, not centered, contains ‘`yy zz`’. Usually what is desired is for the scope of the declaration to contain a blank line or the `\end` command of an environment such as `figure` or `table` that ends the paragraph unit. Thus, if `{\centering xx \\ yy\par} zz` is surrounded by blank lines then it makes a new paragraph with two centered lines ‘`xx`’ and ‘`yy`’, followed by a new paragraph with ‘`zz`’ that is formatted as usual.

Unofficial LaTeX2e reference manual