Time for action – trying out the effect of spaces, line breaks, and empty lines

We will take the first example and insert spaces and line breaks.

1. Modify the previous example as follows:

   \documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{article}
   \begin{document}
   \title{Example 3}
   \author{My name}
   \date{January 5, 2011}
   \maketitle
   \section{What's this?}
   This        is   our
   second document.
   
   It contains two paragraphs. The first line of a paragraph will be
   indented, but not when it follows a heading.
   % Here's a comment.
   \end{document}

2. Typeset.

3. View the output:

   

What just happened?

Though we've inserted some spaces, the distances between the words in the output remained the same. The reason is that LaTeX treats multiple spaces just like a single space. Also, a single line break has the same effect like a single space. It doesn't matter how you arrange your text in the editor using spaces or breaks, the output will stay the same.

A blank line denotes a paragraph break. Like spaces, multiple empty lines are treated as...