LaTeX spacing and displaymath environment

Factual Questions
1

Are there any LaTeX experts here?

I need to work to a tight page limit with a predefined style. The only thing I can change, to squeeze more content into my pages, is the spacing between elements. I’m using the displaymath environment heavily but LaTeX seems to be putting way too much space around it, to the point where I could fit in at least an extra line of text if it was adjusted.

I’ve searched everywhere for an answer to this, including Google groups, but does anybody know if there is a setting to reduce the spacing around the math environment and other similar environments (I presume whatever works for displaymath will also work for altering the spacing around gather environments?)

Thanks!

2

I’ve never done what you’re asking, but as a hack you could try \vspace (with a negative argument) before and after the displaymath environment.

3

There are a couple parameters you can play with:
\abovedisplayskip
\belowdisplayskip
The sneakiest of all is to redefine \baselinestretch, which is normally defined to be 1, but if you place in your preamble:
\def\baselinestretch{.95}
all your interline spaces will be shrunk by 5%. If you are a latex purist, you should say
\renewcommand\baselinestretch{.95}
but the effect is exactly the same.

Let me introduce you to the TUG site. Simply send your queries to
texhax@tug.org
and people much more knowledgeable than me will answer. There is also a newgoup comp.text.tex, at which equally knowledgeable people will reply.

4

I’ve always used the \vspace{-x} hack.

5

I’d add a warning: Scientific journals often have policy on this sort of sneak, as they wish to preserve a uniform look across articles. You typically aren’t allowed to do \renewcommand such formatting items.

6

OK, thanks for the replies. It seems like the best bet is to create my own math environment that’s just a wrapper around displaymath with negative vspace around it. Checking, we’ve been told we cannot change baselinestretch.