\vfill between items in a list

Question

I want to create a list and have \vfill between all the items. Something like this:

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\begin{itemize}
\item One \vfill
\item Two \vfill
\item Three \vfill
\item Four \vfill
\end{itemize}

\end{document}

which works, but would be more elegant if it was like this:

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\renewcommand{\itemsep}{\vfill}
\begin{itemize}
    \item One
    \item Two
    \item Three
    \item Four
\end{itemize}

\end{document}

But I get errors (because \itemsep is a length?). So how can this be achieved? Further, I would want it only to affect the local environment, rather than globally for all such lists.

Answer 1

1. \vfill is an instruction that, more or less, tells TeX to "finish the paragraph and insert blank space to fill".

2. \itemsep is a rubber length parameter, so \renewcommand{\itemsep}{\vfill} is simply wrong.

3. Also \setlength{\itemsep}{\vfill}, or the equivalent itemsep=\vfill with enumitem, is wrong, because \vfill isn't a rubber length specification.

Use

\setlength{\itemsep}{\fill}

or

itemsep=\fill

As explained in the LaTeX manual, \vfill does the same as

\par\vspace{\fill}

and, similarly but not quite, \hfill can be considered as an abbreviation for \hspace{\fill}.

If you want also an automatic \vfill at the end, I suggest you to define a new environment:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[pass,showframe]{geometry} % just to show the final effect

\usepackage{enumitem}

\newenvironment{fullpageitemize}
  {\itemize[nolistsep,itemsep=\fill]}
  {\vfill\enditemize}

\begin{document}

\begin{fullpageitemize}
    \item One
    \item Two
    \item Three
    \item Four
\end{fullpageitemize}

\end{document}

With nolistsep we remove all vertical space, then reset \itemsep to \fill; finally a \vfill is executed just at the end of the environment.