I am completely new to TeX and would like to create a document building on the ACM Guidelines. Papers I've seen using these guidelines such as "Driven by Food: Modeling Geographic Choice" have a small indent when they want to mark a new part of the paragraph. In Word I would create this indent using Tab. How do I do that in TeX? I would like to do it using some sort of "correct" indent width that all articles following the guidelines use.
[Tex/LaTex] Indents in scientific articles (ACM)
indentation
Related Solutions
Use \hangindent=13pt (use any size you wish instead of 13pt for example 1em or 0.3cm}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[absolute,showboxes]{textpos}
\pagestyle{empty}
\TPGrid[1in,1in]{2}{20}
\TPMargin{4pt}
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
\begin{document}
\begin{textblock}{1}(0,2)
{\scshape\large Name}
\newline
{\addtolength{\leftskip}{12pt}
Address 1\\
Address 2
\par
}
\end{textblock}
\begin{textblock}{1}(0,4)
{\scshape\large Name}
\newline
\hangindent=13pt
Address 1\\
Address 2
\end{textblock}
\end{document}
You can also use \hangafter=2 in conjunction with hangindent to effect the indentation from the second line only etc.
The OP also asked why adjusting \leftskip did not work, this is because it was applied within a paragraph, if we break the text into two paragraphs by leaving a blank line, the OP's example would also work as per the example below:
\begin{textblock}{1}(0,2)
{\scshape\large Name}
\newline
{\addtolength{\leftskip}{30pt}
Address 1\\
Address 2
\par
}
The problem is that some of the macros governing the typesetting of the caption aren't \long, that is, they don't accept \par in their argument.
A quick workaround is to add an empty optional argument to \caption, which however would be bad if you want to typeset the list of tables.
A different workaround is to say
\DeclareRobustCommand{\captionpar}{\par}
in the preamble and use \captionpar instead of \par or an empty line in the caption. This hides \par from TeX's eyes when it's absorbing the argument; it's similar to using \endgraf, the difference is that ultimately the “real” \par will be used (\endgraf might not have the current meaning of \par).
A more drastic solution is to make the relevant commands \long:
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\patchcmd[\long]{\caption@prepareanchor}{}{}{}{}
\patchcmd[\long]{\caption@@@addcontentsline}{}{}{}{}
\patchcmd[\long]{\addcontentsline}{}{}{}{}
\makeatother
With this patch you can even type
\caption{Here is the table caption. It should be indented from
the following paragraph:
'indented new paragraph'.}
instead of the more awkward
\caption{Here is the table caption. It should be indented from
the following paragraph:\captionpar
'indented new paragraph'.}
required by the solution above.
In any case, you need to define a parindent for the caption:
\usepackage[
labelfont=bf,
labelsep=newline,
singlelinecheck=false,
format=plain,
indention=2cm,
parindent=1em, % <--- adjust to suit
]{caption}
Best Answer
the paper you cite uses the "alternate" guidelines. (the other format leaves space between paragraphs, and sets the first line of the new paragraph flush left.)
to indicate a paragraph break, all you need to do is leave a blank line before starting a new paragraph, or enter the command
\par. i usually recommend the blank line, because it makes the input file easier to navigate visually.the indentation will be inserted automatically.