What is the best practice with spacing paragraphs

The answers to use Space Above and Space Below are correct — using extra paragraph returns or "soft returns" is a very poor practice even in apps like Word. Learn to use spacing above, below, and line-height to your layout's best advantage, both "looks" and esthetics and fitting text to pages.

The next step in this is using spacing to control multiple paragraph styles, such as a heading, over intro text, over a subheading, over body text, with bullets in the midst... you get the idea. It's okay to use any combination of spacing above and below, but using precise multiples to get a clean, consistent look should be a goal. I try to use ONLY space above; that is, X amount of space above each style and zero extra space below. This makes it easier to adjust layouts as you develop a document, and you don't run into spacing collapse and combination issues when there is spacing below one style and above the next. (That isn't necessarily wrong, or even poor practice, but if you can get in the habit of using only one spacing, doc maintenance gets a lot simpler.)

The correct way to create sapce between paragraphs is to use sapce above or below. Using the Return/Enter key to create a blank paragraph can result in unwanted blank gaps at the top of a column.

The space bar creates a space between characters or words. Space above and below are good options.