WordPress, MathML, Latex – vertical space between (aligned) formulas

This is only a small tip regarding the vertical spacing of formulas/equations in WordPress plugins which understand the LaTex notation. As e.g. the plugin “MathML Block”.

Very often when you align formulas with the
\begin{align} equ 1 \\ equ 2 \end{align}
commands the vertical arrangement of the equations may appear sub-optimal: The equations get very close in vertical direction.

Especially when you work with complex formulas that have some significant vertical extensions the vertical distance between adjacent equations often becomes too small in my opinion.

As I am not an experienced user of neither Latex nor MathML I always fiddled around with some invisible \phantom{} creation in the lower formulas which gave me sufficient extra vertical space. But this is a tiresome approach. As I learned some days ago from a tex-related stackexchange post there is a much simpler recipe:

The line-break symbol “\\” can be extended like “\\[6pt]“. This will give you exactly the vertical separation you want to get. For details see the following link:

add vertical space between equations” at tex.stackexcange.com from an author LaRiFaRi.

I think this simple trick is worth spreading as it saves so much time!