To align text to the right or left, use the commands:
\begin{flushright}
\end{flushright}
or:
\begin{flushleft}
\end{flushleft}
Use these commands with the text you want aligned in the center. To center align text, use the same \begin and \end, but change the text in curly brackets to center.
To make a linebreak, use two backslashes: \\
Or, use \\* to start a new line without starting a new paragraph
Or, use \linebreak[n] where n is the number of lines to break between 0-4.
A paragraph is ended by one or more completely blank lines -- lines not containing even a `%'. A blank line should not appear where a new paragraph cannot be started, such as in math mode or in the argument of a sectioning command.
| \indent | Indent this paragraph. |
| \noindent | Do not indent this paragraph. |
| \par | Another way of writing a blank line. |
For ordinary paragraphs, just leave at least one completely blank line inbetween lines of the text, or use the:
\par command.
To modify the appearance and functioning of paragraphs, you'll use the \parskip and \parindent commands. Both of these commands are used in the preamble with the \setlength command, that way the paragraphs will be consistent throughout your document. The \setlength command should almost always be a fixed size so that the paragraphs don't look ragged, which they would with a flexible size. The \parskip refers to the space between paragraphs and \parindent refers to the length of the paragraph indentation. Remember, LaTeX is a professional typesetting program, as such, its defaults are those that would appear in printed books, so you may need to change these dimensions to fit your needs.
The \setlength command is used with this syntax:
\setlength{\parindent}{6mm} or
\setlength{\parskip}{1cm}
Also, \parskip can be set to a fixed or a flexible size. For documents with no images or tables, a fixed size is fine, but to avoid oddly designed pages for more complexly designed documents, a flexible length can be very helpful. The flexible length is made by adding a plus and minus to the \parskip length as such:
\setlength{parskip}{1cm plus4mm minus3mm}
To turn off indentation completely, set it to zero with the setlength command like this:
\setlength{\parindent}{0in}
If you set the indentation to zero, make sure to set the \parskip so that your readers will be able to tell where paragraphs end.