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What is the best way to globally change the amount of vertical space between items in list environments?

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3 Answers

up vote 41 down vote accepted

The easiest way to do this is to use the enumitem package.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum} % for dummy text
\usepackage{enumitem}
\setlist{nolistsep} % or \setlist{noitemsep} to leave space around whole list

\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]
\begin{enumerate}
\item foo
\item bar
\end{enumerate}
\lipsum[2]
\end{document}

The enumitem package also allows you to set the list spacing for a particular type or level of list, or for any particular individual list:

\setlist[2]{noitemsep} % sets the itemsep and parsep for all level two lists to 0
\setenumerate{noitemsep} % sets no itemsep for enumerate lists only
\begin{enumerate}[noitemsep] % sets no itemsep for just this list
...
\end{enumerate}

Of course, it also allows complete control over all other aspects of the list formatting too.

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1  
This is probably the best package for the job. It accepts key value arguments so you could say \begin{enumerate}[itemsep=1pt, topsep=12pt, partopsep=0pt] etc, maybe you should expand a bit in your answer. – Yiannis Lazarides Feb 9 '11 at 16:01
@Yiannis The question did ask for a global change. But I've added some other examples along the lines of what you suggest. Thanks. – Alan Munn Feb 9 '11 at 16:11
Without using this package I can specify the type of item numbering as an optional parameter, e.g. \begin{itemize}[(i)]. How do I do this while using enumitem? Right now I get an error: missing endcsname. – Will May 23 '12 at 4:00
@Will The syntax you suggest is that of the enumerate package. You can emulate that package with enumitem by loading it with the [shortlabels] option (i.e. \usepackage[shortlabels]{enumitem}) But the recommended way is to use the label key: \begin{enumerate}[label={(\roman*)}]. See the enumitem documentation for more information. – Alan Munn May 23 '12 at 4:06
Perfect, thank you! – Will May 25 '12 at 2:13
up vote 10 down vote

You can use paralist package and use any of its 'compact' lists (compactitem, compactenum, compactdesc).

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{paralist}
\begin{document}
    Regular itemize
    \begin{itemize}
       \item First
       \item Second
       \item Third
    \end{itemize}

    Compactitem
    \begin{compactitem}
        \item First
        \item Second
        \item Third
    \end{compactitem}
\end{document}
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up vote 7 down vote

Load package paralist and set

\useackage{paralist}
  \let\itemize\compactitem
  \let\enditemize\endcompactitem
  \let\enumerate\compactenum
  \let\endenumerate\endcompactenum
  \let\description\compactdesc
  \let\enddescription\endcompactdesc
  \pltopsep=\medskipamount
  \plitemsep=1pt
  \plparsep=1pt
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