Text Formatting ⇒ How can we reduce spacing between itemize and heading

[theo moore]

For some reason, there is an extra bit of vertical space between the first itemize bullet point and an above heading when placed in a minibox environment.

Here is a sample code.

Code: Select all

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

\usepackage{titlesec}

\titleformat{\subsubsection}[hang]{\normalfont}{\thesection}{2cm}{\Large \bfseries}{}
\titlespacing{\subsubsection}{0pt}{0em}{0em}

\begin{document}

\noindent
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.75\textwidth}
\subsubsection*{Heading 1}
  \begin{itemize}
  \item Entry 1 % Why is there more vertical space above here??
  \end{itemize} 
  
\subsubsection*{Heading 2}
 \begin{itemize}
 \item Entry 2
 \end{itemize}
\end{minipage}

\vspace{2cm}

\subsubsection*{Heading 3}
  \begin{itemize}
  \item Entry 3
  \end{itemize}
  
\subsubsection*{Heading 4}
  \begin{itemize}
  \item Entry 4
  \end{itemize}
\end{document}

I don't understand why the vertical space between "Heading 1" and "Entry 1" is not the same as the vertical spaces between the other headings and their entries. It's a very small space difference, but trust me, it's noticeable.

If the minipage environment is removed, everything works as normal.

Can anybody tell me why this extra gap is being inserted?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

With \mbox{}\par at the beginning of the minipage envivonment that space would vanish:

Code: Select all

\begin{minipage}[t]{0.75\textwidth}\mbox{}\par
\subsubsection*{Heading 1}

But of course this could cause some unwanted space too, but at the other place it could be handled differently.

Stefan

[theo moore]

With \mbox{}\par at the beginning of the minipage envivonment that space would vanish:

Can you explain what this does?

But of course this could cause some unwanted space too, but at the other place it could be handled differently.

Again, I don't understand this---but perhaps if you answer the former, I'll understand the latter

Also, you never explained what was the source of the extra space. Do you know?

[theo moore]

In addition to the above question, can someone answer this similar one?

In my document, if I were to do this:

Code: Select all

This is one paragraph 

This is a new paragraph

There is no paragraph break (\parskip). But if I write

Code: Select all

This is one paragraph

\mbox{}\par
This is a new paragraph

Then there is indeed a new paragraph. Can you explain this?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

In your document \parskip is just 1pt, I guess you've noticed the additional line skip.

Stefan

[theo moore]

In your document \parskip is just 1pt, I guess you've noticed the additional line skip.

Stefan

How did you know that? And more importantly, how would I know that? Is there a package that will print out all the relevant spacing settings?

Also, can you explain if \parskip is 1pt, why does a command like \mbox{}\par produce a 'new line'?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

To be more precise \parskip is 0pt+1pt by default in the article class. It can be printed by the command \the\parskip in a document. By \the you can print out a length.

The empty line is equivalent to \par. \mbox{} creates an empty box on the line, needing no horizontal space, the following \par breaks it again, that's why there's an empty line.

Stefan

[theo moore]

To be more precise \parskip is 0pt+1pt by default in the article class. It can be printed by the command \the\parskip in a document. By \the you can print out a length.

The empty line is equivalent to \par. \mbox{} creates an empty box on the line, needing no horizontal space, the following \par breaks it again, that's why there's an empty line.

Stefan

Ooooh. I see. So the \mbox{}\par command produces a vertical space equivalent to \baselineskip.

That makes a lot of sense. Thank you.

I remember reading about a package which, we loaded, would insert a page into your document listing all the latex space commands and their uses. Does that ring a bell?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

The layouts package provides such commands like \pagevalues, \paragraphvalues etc.

Stefan

[theo moore]

The layouts package provides such commands like \pagevalues, \paragraphvalues etc.

Stefan

Yup, that's it!

Is there a similar package for fonts? That is, it would be really useful to have something that could automatically display a font, next to its command so you could see exactly the whole family of fonts defaulted in your document.