I'm probably an idiot but changing paragraph spacing has no visible effect

[chasrmartin]

That ridiculous title probably says everything but I have been messing with trying to add paragraph space for seems like a week. I'm using the minimal scene. I have the minimal settings plug-in, and the minimal author suggested using style settings. No joy. I changed the paragraph spacing to ridiculous numbers even like 5ex and there is no visible effect. i'm sure there's something simple going on here and I just don't get it, but I just don't get it.