The PreTeXt Guide

Once you have divisions, what do you put into them? Most likely, paragraphs. We use long, exact names for tags that are used infrequently, like <subsubsection>. But for frequently used elements, we use abbreviated tags, often identical to names used in HTML. So a paragraph is delimited by simply the <p> tag.

Lots of things can happen in paragraphs, some things can only happen in a paragraph, and some things are banned in paragraphs. Inside a paragraph, you can emphasize some text (<em>), you can quote some text (<q>), you can mark a phrase as being from another language (<foreign>), and much more. You can use almost any character your keyboard can produce, but need to be careful with the three XML exceptional characters: ampersand (&), less than (<), and rarely, greater than (>). (See Section 3.14.) You must put a list inside a paragraph, and all mathematics (Section 3.6) will occur inside a paragraph. You cannot put a <table> or a <figure> in a paragraph, and many other structured components are prohibited in paragraphs.

Paragraphs are also used as part of the structure of other parts of your document. For example, a <remark> could be composed of several <p>. As you get started with PreTeXt, remember that much of your actual writing will occur inside of a <p> and you will have a collection of tags you can use there to express your meaning to your readers.

So early in your writing project, familiarize yourself with the components of a paragraph detailed in Section 4.1.