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itemize
Synopsis:
\begin{itemize} \item[optional label of first item] text of first item \item[optional label of second item] text of second item ... \end{itemize}
Produce a list that is unordered, sometimes called a bullet list. The
environment must have at least one \item
; having none causes the
LaTeX error ‘Something's wrong--perhaps a missing \item’.
This gives a two-item list.
\begin{itemize} \item Pencil and watercolor sketch by Cassandra \item Rice portrait \end{itemize}
As a top-level list each label would come out as a bullet, •. The format of the labeling depends on the nesting level; see below.
Start list items with the \item
command (see \item). If you
give \item
an optional argument by following it with square
brackets, as in \item[Optional label]
, then by default it will
appear in bold and be flush right, so it could extend into the left
margin. For labels that are flush left see the description
environment. Following the \item
is optional text, which may
contain multiple paragraphs.
Itemized lists can be nested within one another, up to four levels deep.
They can also be nested within other paragraph-making environments, such
as enumerate
(see enumerate). The itemize
environment
uses the commands \labelitemi
through \labelitemiv
to
produce the default label (this also uses the convention of lowercase
roman numerals at the end of the command names that signify the nesting
level). These are the default marks at each level.
\textbullet
)
\normalfont\bfseries\textendash
)
\textasteriskcentered
)
\textperiodcentered
)
Change the labels with \renewcommand
. For instance, this makes
the first level use diamonds.
\renewcommand{\labelitemi}{$\diamond$}
The distance between the left margin of the enclosing environment and
the left margin of the itemize
list is determined by the
parameters \leftmargini
through \leftmarginvi
. (Note the
convention of using lowercase roman numerals a the end of the command
name to denote the nesting level.) The defaults are: 2.5em
in
level 1 (2em
in two-column mode), 2.2em
in level 2,
1.87em
in level 3, and 1.7em
in level 4, with smaller
values for more deeply nested levels.
For other major LaTeX labeled list environments, see description and enumerate. For information about list layout parameters, including the default values, and for information about customizing list layout, see list. The package enumitem is useful for customizing lists.
This example greatly reduces the margin space for outermost itemized lists.
\setlength{\leftmargini}{1.25em} % default 2.5em
Especially for lists with short items, it may be desirable to elide
space between items. Here is an example defining an itemize*
environment with no extra spacing between items, or between paragraphs
within a single item (\parskip
is not list-specific,
see \parindent & \parskip):
\newenvironment{itemize*}% {\begin{itemize}% \setlength{\itemsep}{0pt}% \setlength{\parsep}{0pt}}% \setlength{\parskip}{0pt}}% {\end{itemize}}