我想定义一些技术术语（例如精度、重复性、误差、准确度等）。我见过两种不同方式的教程：
\begin{description}
\item[term] describing text
\end{description}
或者
\paragraph{term}
describing text
它们之间有什么区别、哪种方式适合哪种应用，以及是否还有更好的选择？
答案1
该description环境在概念上是一个itemize类似环境，因此是一个“列表”，用于列出一些项目，增强其名称并显示其描述，以便它们与正常文本分开和缩进（从而增强），并且更清晰可见。
\paragraph是分段命令，表示文档中的分段，通常可用于插入一些注释或一些简短讨论特定主题的小段落。段落开头的单词（即括号之间的单词）之间的间距比 中使用的间距大。请注意，description对于较长的描述，这些描述会像普通文本一样流动，不会显示在缩进环境中。
我会选择description，它更紧凑并且增强了定义，并且通常从不使用环境paragraph，除非我想对上面的文本进行一些评论以吸引读者。
编辑
我正在添加一个例子
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{description}
\item[item1:] a somewhat long long description about your item and all about it and look how pretty it is displayed like this
\item[item2:] a somewhat long long description about your item and all about it and look how pretty it is displayed like this
\end{description}
\paragraph{item1} a somewhat long long description about your item and all about it and look how pretty it is displayed like this
\paragraph{item2} a somewhat long long description about your item and all about it and look how pretty it is displayed like this
\end{document}
答案2
我自己description也测试了paragraph一下，发现一般情况下description应该使用。下面是一个简单的比较：
- 如图所示莫里安巴尔的回答：
description缩进所有尾随文本行，而paragraph仅缩进第一行。 description更适合放在前导文本和尾随文本之间。因为paragraph很难看出尾随文本是否是描述的一部分。（因此，如果整个部分都是关于定义的，那么您可以只使用段落。）- 的描述
description符不能换行；paragraph标题可以。 paragraph条目可能（显然）最终出现在目录中（如果tocdepth相应设置）- 您不能引用描述符名称（据我所知），只能引用包含的页面或部分
description；但您nameref可以引用paragraph。
我曾经遇到过这种情况，所有description项目都拼命地填满页面，导致它们之间出现大片空白。这里无法重现此行为。
以下是 MWE：
\documentclass[a5paper]{article}
\usepackage[pass]{geometry}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage[nameinlink]{cleveref}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\begin{document}
\setcounter{tocdepth}{5}
\tableofcontents\newpage
\section{Definitions with the \texttt{description} environment} \label{sec:sec1}
Here is just some text to fill up some space in the front, to make the document look like some common tex example. I need to continue to write senseless text, so the space will be taken from the page.
\begin{description}
\item[item 1:\label{des:item1}]Just a little short text here.
\item[super-duper-very-extra-mega-long item which doesn't line-break] Obviously \texttt{description}-descriptors can not line break... Very sad.
\item[s.i.:] Here comes a very short item, but it should also have a reasonably long describing text.
\item[item four] Just some random text, which should take up some space right behind the item-element.
\item Here one example without a descriptor.\\ Can we have manual line-breaks inside the description? Oh yes, we can!\\ I remember some case, were there was strange spacing between list-items, trying to fill up the page.
But apparently it does not occur in this case.
\item[last item] Let's see one more item in the list.
%\item[last last item] There is always a last \texttt{item}.
\end{description}
Juuuust a little more text to fill a line after all the describing stuff above. And another line allmost filled! The line is not filled yet, so I have to write some more. And more... AND MOOOORE!! So much text! This is an incredibly long text, where latex has no place to simply page-break it. Let's see how it performs.
\section{Definitions with the \texttt{paragraph} instruction}
Just an introductional text-line.
\paragraph[apparently paragraphed items may end up in the table of contents]{Paragraphed item 1}\label{par:item1}
I am tired of inventing text. \texttt{Blindtext}, help me out here! Ohh.... no blindtext... Damn. Now I have to fill the text again by myself! Ooooh byyyy myyyyy seeeeelft. Don't wanna be... Ah. Were you singing along?
%\blindtext
\paragraph{super-duper-extra-mega-very-very-extremely-long item which does line-break}
A somewhat very longer description.
\paragraph{} Lets have an empty one, just as we had before. Just to see how it looks. How about manual line-breaking?\\Mom, can I touch it? Only if you wash your hands afterwards!
\paragraph{s.o.:} or a short one!
Does this text belong to the last item? Who knows? Nobody does! You just can't really tell. Too bad. It almost looked good.
\section{Referencing (with \texttt{cleveref})}
\cref{des:item1} on \cpageref{des:item1}. Does not work properly... \texttt{nameref} crashes.\\
\cref{par:item1}, \nameref{par:item1} on \cpageref{par:item1}. Does also not work perfectly. But at least \texttt{nameref} works.
\end{document}