Making paragraphs (LaTeX2e unofficial reference manual (November 2018))

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## 15 Making paragraphs

To start a paragraph, just type some text. To end the current paragraph, put an empty line. This is three paragraphs, separated by two empty lines.

    It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession
    of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

    However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his
    first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds
    of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property
    of some one or other of their daughters.

    ``My dear Mr. Bennet,'' said his lady to him one day,
    ``have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?''

The separator lines must be empty, including not containing a comment character, `%`.

Once LaTeX has gathered all of a paragraph’s contents it divides that content into lines in a way that is optimized over the entire paragraph (see Line breaking).

There are places where a new paragraph is not permitted. Don’t put a blank line in math mode (see Modes); here the line before the `\end{equation}`

    \begin{equation}
      2^{|S|} > |S|

    \end{equation}

will get you the error ‘`Missing $ inserted`’. Similarly, the blank line in this `section` argument

    \section{aaa

    bbb}

gets ‘`Runaway argument? {aaa ! Paragraph ended before \@sect was complete`’.

Unofficial LaTeX2e reference manual