How should I use \paragraph? I mean, If I want to put "Characteristics", should I put \paragraph{Characteristics} or \paragraph{Characteristics:}. Or is it up to me which one to use?
[Tex/LaTex] Correct use of \paragraph titles
punctuationsectioningsections-paragraphstypography
Related Solutions
You didn't say anything about your document class. So, here comes an example for article that uses the titlesec package.
\documentclass[11pt,a4paper,english]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage[raggedright]{titlesec}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\titleformat{\paragraph}[hang]{\normalfont\normalsize\bfseries}{\theparagraph}{1em}{}
\titlespacing*{\paragraph}{0pt}{3.25ex plus 1ex minus .2ex}{0.5em}
\begin{document}
\blinddocument
\end{document}
You can easily adjust the space before and after the heading according to your needs. The package manual has the details. The package also masters page styles so that it might not be necessary to load fancyhdr.
Note that the blindtext package is only used for creating dummy text thus not part of the solution.
You can use the titlesec package; the ulem package was used for the underlining:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[explicit]{titlesec}
\usepackage{ulem}
\usepackage{lipsum}% just to generate text for the example
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{4}
\titleformat{\paragraph}[runin]
{\normalfont\normalsize\bfseries}{}{15pt}{\uline{\theparagraph\hspace*{1em}#1.}}
\titleformat{name=\paragraph,numberless}[runin]
{\normalfont\normalsize\bfseries}{}{15pt}{\uline{#1.}}
\begin{document}
\section{A Section}
\subsection{A Subsection}
\subsubsection{A Subsubection}
\paragraph{A Numbered Paragraph}
\lipsum[2]
\paragraph*{An Unnumbered Paragraph}
\lipsum[2]
\end{document}
Best Answer
I think a colon would look bad, but a period looks good. Not having it can look strange since you end up with something like
as opposed to
The "Title Another" looks odd to me.