Text is displayed by indenting it from the left margin. Quotations are commonly displayed. There are short quotations
This is a short a quotation. It consists of a single paragraph of text. See how it is formatted.
and longer ones.
This is a longer quotation. It consists of two paragraphs of text, neither of which are particularly interesting.
This is the second paragraph of the quotation. It is just as dull as the first paragraph.
Another frequently-displayed structure is a list. The following is an example of an itemized list.
This is the first item of an itemized list. Each item in the list is marked with a “tick”. You don’t have to worry about what kind of tick mark is used.
This is the second item of the list. It contains another list nested inside it. The inner list is an enumerated list.
This is the first item of an enumerated list that is nested within the itemized list.
This is the second item of the inner list. LaTeX allows you to nest lists deeper than you really should.
This is the rest of the second item of the outer list. It is no more interesting than any other part of the item.
This is the third item of the list.
You can even display poetry.
There is an environment for verse
Whose features some poets will curse.For instead of making
Them do all line breaking,
It allows them to put too many words on a line when they’d rather be forced to be terse.
Mathematical formulas may also be displayed. A displayed formula is one-line long; multiline formulas require special formatting instructions.
Don’t start a paragraph with a displayed equation, nor make one a paragraph by itself.