What is the purpose of Serial.println() without an argument?

Question

I am attempting to control a stepper motor with Sparkfun's Big Easy Driver, and I see the line "Serial.println();" they put in the example code. Why is there no argument and what function does this serve?

//Declare pin functions on Arduino
#define stp 2
#define dir 3
#define MS1 4
#define MS2 5
#define MS3 6
#define EN 7
//Declare variables for functions
char user_input;
int x;
int y;
int state;
void setup() {
 pinMode(stp, OUTPUT);
 pinMode(dir, OUTPUT);
 pinMode(MS1, OUTPUT);
 pinMode(MS2, OUTPUT);
 pinMode(MS3, OUTPUT);
 pinMode(EN, OUTPUT);
 resetBEDPins(); //Set step, direction, microstep and enable pins to default states
 Serial.begin(9600); //Open Serial connection for debugging
 Serial.println("Begin motor control");
 Serial.println();
 //Print function list for user selection
 Serial.println("Enter number for control option:");
 Serial.println("1. Turn at default microstep mode.");
 Serial.println("2. Reverse direction at default microstep mode.");
 Serial.println("3. Turn at 1/16th microstep mode.");
 Serial.println("4. Step forward and reverse directions.");
 Serial.println();
}

• jsotola: prints everything in the argument, followed by a newline .... in other words, prints just a newline
• jsotola: when you post code in a question, select all of the code and press ctrl-k or click the {} button .... all of the code will be indented by 4 spaces, which causes it to be displayed as code ...... upvote for being concerned with code formatting
• Jackalakalaka: That's simple. Thanks! So if you had printed text (surrounded by quotation marks) before, the same effect would be achieved by putting in a "\n", correct?
• jsotola: yes, serial.print("\n"); gives same result as serial.println();
• Edgar Bonet: @jsotola: No, Serial.println() outputs a '\r' before the '\n', which Serial.print("\n") doesn't.

Answer 1

It simply prints a newline to the serial monitor. Just for spacing.

Answer 2

To complement jose can u c's answer: the Arduino Serial object uses CRLF as the end-of-line marker. That's an ASCII CR (carriage return, or '\r' in C) followed by ASCII LF (line feed, '\n' in C). Thus,

Serial.println();

is equivalent to

Serial.print("\r\n");

• Jackalakalaka: This is a cool expansion on some fundamental formatting stuff. Thank you for the info