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From: eijkhout@s41.csrd.uiuc.edu (Victor Eijkhout)
Subject: Re: The space between the headline and the text..
Message-ID: <1991Mar24.003027.25205@csrd.uiuc.edu>
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Organization: UIUC Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
References: <66929@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> <67233@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 91 00:30:27 GMT
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v096my2q@ubvmsc.cc.buffalo.edu (Mark A Wieczorek) writes:

>	Well I found out what I was doing. In one of the files that I
>input initially had the command \null in it. It seems that this was
>starting the paper as if it was a new paragraph.

Not quite. \null == \hbox{}. The topskip gets inserted before this,
and ordinary baselineskip will separate this from the first line
of text. Your text therefore drops by 12pt (one baselineskip).

> I was told that
>you should put \null at the beginning of any document. Should I? 

No.

>And 
>what is the purpose of this command?

It can be used as a separator, for instance for unwanted
ligatures 'shelf\null full', or for forcing the spacefactor
back to 1000: ' ... and NASA\null.' <- here you would not get
extended spacing if the null was omitted.

>	Also, I am still looking for a command that will put extra space
>between the headline and the main text. Is their any way of doing this
>or should I just forget about it?

As in your earlier post, you didn't mention if you used
plain TeX, LaTeX, or whatever.
For plain TeX, the easiest way is to redefine the macro \makeheadline,
which is the object that comes directly above the text block.
Make it \vbox{\hbox{...headline text...}\vskip ....}
and you're set.

Victor.
