[texhax] Line breaks in plain TeX

Philip TAYLOR [PC336/H-XP] P.Taylor at Rhul.Ac.Uk
Sat Jun 7 10:20:30 CEST 2003


Phil Parker wrote:
> 
> On 06/07/2003 at 06:42 AM, zsdc <zsdc at wp.pl> wrote:
> >How do I force a line break in TeX?
> 
> \newline ?

->

This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159-pre-1.0-unofficial-20010704 (Web2c 7.3.3.1)
(./Citibank.tex{f:/Layered products/TeXLive/texmf-var/pdftex/config/pdftex.cfg}
! Undefined control sequence.
l.1 \newline
             \end
?

so maybe not!  The real solution is \hfil \break, but one
is forced to ask /why/ one would want to force a new-line
into a TeX document in any but the rarest circumstances.
Almost every instance of a forced line break that I have
seen (in raw text, rather than in macros) is a result
of some fundamental confusion whereby the author, not
liking a full paragraph break, seeks to interpose something
less.  The result is usually a complete mess, since the
reader is left competely uncertain as to what the line-
break was meant to signify.

Philip Taylor


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