Setting the indention of unordered lists

Question

I'd like to set the indention of an itemize-list. How can this be done?

Answer 1

To customize itemize lists and other lists, I recommend to use the enumitem package. It provides commands to customize the different dimension of lists as well as their labels, using key=value options.

First, load the package:

\usepackage{enumitem}

Then, for instance, if you like to set both left margin and item indentation to 10pt, for the first level (0):

\setitemize[0]{leftmargin=10pt,itemindent=10pt}

For example, if the bulletpoints shall align with the left margin of the text, use

\setitemize[0]{leftmargin=*}

The lengths you may specify:

• horizontal: leftmargin, rightmargin, itemindent, listparindent, labelwidth, labelsep
• vertical: topsep, partopsep, parsep, itemsep

You could choose various symbols for the bullets, further you might benefit even more if you also use enumerated lists and wish to modify their appearance.

For complete information, type texdoc enumitem at the command prompt or open the documentation on CTAN.

Answer 2

Define a new environment. Say you wanted a 0.25 inch indentation, something like this could do the trick.

\newenvironment{itemize1}{
  \begin{itemize}{$\bullet$}{
      \setlength{\leftmargin}{0.25in}}}{\end{itemize}}

then use the newly defined environment.

\begin{itemize1}
\item First item!
\item Second!
\end{itemize1}