How to prevent a page break before an itemize list?

Question

It is not nice to have a page break right after the colon and have the list start on a new page:

And here, finally, is the list of mission-critical items:
\begin{itemize}
...
\end{itemize}

How can I prevent that?

Answer 1

\makeatletter 
\newcommand\mynobreakpar{\par\nobreak\@afterheading} 
\makeatother
.....
text\mynobreakpar
\begin{itemize}
....

Answer 2

LaTeX puts \beginparpenalty at the begin of a list. The standard classes set \@beginparpenalty to -\@lowpenalty (-51), i.e., they somewhat encourage page breaks before lists. If you want to avoid page breaks before lists at all costs, set \@beginparpenalty to 10000 in the preamble of your document.

\documentclass{article}

\makeatletter
\@beginparpenalty=10000
\makeatother

\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}

\lipsum[1-5]

\begin{itemize}
\item \lipsum*[6]
\end{itemize}

\end{document}