Empty line on a slide in Latex Beamer

Question

I am using Latex Beamer for creating a presentation.

On one slide I have

\frame
{
  \frametitle{fdjsljklfdjs}
  What is fdjsljklfdjs
  \begin{itemize}
  \item item one
  \item item one
  \end{itemize}

  Why do we want to know it
  \begin{itemize}
  \item item one
  \item item one
  \item item three
  \end{itemize}
}

I would like to have space between the first itemize block and the second question. However, if I try \\ or \newline, I get a pdflatex parsing error:

! LaTeX Error: There's no line here to end.

How can I get an emtpy line?

Solution

Use \vspace, e.g.

\vspace{1in}

for a one inch vertical space. If you want it to be equal to the normal distance between two lines, use the length \baselineskip.

Comments

[Maksim Kondratyuk]

The \baselineskip does not work for me, but the \vspace{} command does! Thanks!

[Maksim Kondratyuk]

Do you also know what the reason is that \\ and \newline don't work?

[Mikael Auno]

I don't know more than what can be read from the error message. As I understand it (I've seen this message a few times myself), \\ and \newline just break an existing line, but there is no line to break before you put some content on it and a new line has just been created for you after the itemize block. I might be totally wrong in that interpretation, but that's my guess anyway.

[Mark Reid]

@Peter: \baselineskip is a length. To use it with \vspace you have to write \vspace{\baselineskip}.