Unable to reduce top whitespace in a list

Question

I wanted a really compact list, so I have defined a custom environment to achieve the same.

However, I am unable to get rid of the whitespace at the top of the list beyond a certain width. I tinkered with negative values for topsep and other parameters, however no success.

Why does this happen? Is there a minimum limit on the top whitespace in a list?

Here is an example of my resume:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}

\usepackage[total={6.8in,9.3in},top=1.1in,left=.7in]{geometry}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\usepackage[hidelinks]{hyperref}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{multirow}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{tgpagella}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage{enumitem}

\pagestyle{fancy}
% Remove page numbers
\fancyfoot{}

\newenvironment{noindlist}
 {\begin{list}{\labelitemi}{\leftmargin=1em\itemindent=0em\topsep=0em\partopsep=0em\itemsep=-4pt}}
 {\end{list}}

\setlength{\headheight}{52pt}
\chead{%
  \fontsize{20.74pt}{24pt}\selectfont{}%
  Firstname Secondname\\%
  \fontsize{8pt}{9.6pt}\selectfont{}%
  \oldstylenums{1234}C, Street Name, City, State, \oldstylenums{12345}, United States; \oldstylenums{123 456 7890}; %
  \href{mailto:email@gmail.com}{\nolinkurl{email@gmail.com}}; %
  \href{http://google.com}{WWW}%
}

\begin{document}
\noindent
\renewcommand\multirowsetup{\raggedleft}
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{rX lX}
  \multirow{2}{2.5cm}{RESEARCH\\WORK} & \textbf{Master's Thesis:} Blah Blah Blah \hfill University\\
  &  \textit{Advisor: \href{http://www.google.com}{Prof. Some Name}}\hfill April \oldstylenums{2012 =} Current\\
  & \begin{noindlist}
    \item First line of the thesis description
    \item Second line of the thesis description which is quite long and hence will spill out in an additional line
  \end{noindlist}\\
\end{tabularx}
\end{document}

Here's an example with topsep set to -100em:

Answer 1

You have to be careful: \topsep is used between the previous text and the list but also after the list and the following text, so this

\documentclass{article}

\newenvironment{noindlist}
 {\begin{list}{\labelitemi}{\leftmargin=1em\itemindent=0em\topsep=-5em\itemsep=-4pt}}
 {\end{list}}

\begin{document}

\noindent Some text before the list
\begin{noindlist}
\item First item.
\item Second item.
\end{noindlist}
Some text after the list

\end{document}

will produce a rather undesired effect:

You can set \topsep and \partopsep to 0em:

\documentclass{article}

\newenvironment{noindlist}
 {\begin{list}{\labelitemi}{\leftmargin=1em\itemindent=0em\topsep=0em\partopsep=0em \itemsep=-4pt}}
 {\end{list}}

\begin{document}

\noindent Some text before the list
\begin{noindlist}
\item First item.
\item Second item.
\end{noindlist}
Some text after the list

\end{document

Another option is to use nolistsep and leftamrgin=* from the enumitem package:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}

\begin{document}

\noindent Some text before the list
\begin{itemize}[nolistsep,leftmargin=*]
\item First item.
\item Second item.
\end{itemize}
Some text after the list

\end{document}

If this must be applied for all itemize environments, you can say

\setlist[itemize]{nolistsep,leftmargin=*}

in the preamble, or you could define your own list with these settings (refer to the package documentation).

Update: now that the actual code has been provided, the problem can be detected: inside a tabular cell lists insert a vertical space given by \parskip since @minipage is false; to prevent this, one can "make believe" the list that it's inside a minipage (inside a minipage this space won't be added) setting @minipage to true. Here's a possible solution:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}

\usepackage[total={6.8in,9.3in},top=1.1in,left=.7in]{geometry}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\usepackage[hidelinks]{hyperref}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{multirow}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{tgpagella}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage{enumitem}

\pagestyle{fancy}
% Remove page numbers
\fancyfoot{}

\newenvironment{noindlist}
 {\begin{list}{\labelitemi}{\leftmargin=1em\itemindent=0em\topsep=0em\partopsep=0em\itemsep=-4pt\parskip=0pt}}
 {\end{list}}

\setlength{\headheight}{52pt}
\chead{%
  \fontsize{20.74pt}{24pt}\selectfont{}%
  Firstname Secondname\\%
  \fontsize{8pt}{9.6pt}\selectfont{}%
  \oldstylenums{1234}C, Street Name, City, State, \oldstylenums{12345}, United States; \oldstylenums{123 456 7890}; %
  \href{mailto:email@gmail.com}{\nolinkurl{email@gmail.com}}; %
  \href{http://google.com}{WWW}%
}

\makeatletter
\newcommand\novspace{\@minipagetrue}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\noindent
\renewcommand\multirowsetup{\raggedleft}
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{rX lX}
  \multirow{2}{2.5cm}{RESEARCH\\WORK} & \textbf{Master's Thesis:} Blah Blah Blah \hfill University\\
  &  \textit{Advisor: \href{http://www.google.com}{Prof. Some Name}}\hfill April \oldstylenums{2012 =} Current \\
  & \novspace\begin{noindlist}
    \item First line of the thesis description
    \item Second line of the thesis description which is quite long and hence will spill out in an additional line
  \end{noindlist}\\
\end{tabularx}
\end{document}

Of course, if you are going to use lists several times in your column, the best thing would be to define a new column type:

\makeatletter
\newcommand\novspace{\@minipagetrue}
\makeatother
\newcolumntype{Y}{>{\novspace}X}

and then:

\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{rY lX}
...
\end{tabularx}

Also, seeing your first column, perhaps it would be better to define as a p{<length>} column so it will have a fixed width (given by <length>).

Answer 2

Please always provide a complete document that shows the issue. With the standard settings the negative spacing you show does not leave a large space, in fact it produces negative space and over-prints the surrounding text. So the effect you show is due to code you have not shown, which makes it hard to help.

I would guess you have a non standard \parskip and haven't taken account of that and/or \partopsep

\documentclass{article}

\newenvironment{noindlist}
 {\begin{list}{\labelitemi}{\leftmargin=1em \itemindent=0em \topsep=-5em \itemsep=-4pt}}
 {\end{list}}

\begin{document}


aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa aaaa 
\begin{noindlist}
\item 1 1 1 1 1 1
\item 2 2 2 2 2 2
\item 3 3 3 3 3 3
\end{noindlist}
bbbb bbbb bbbb bbbb bbbb bbbb bbbb bbbb 


\vspace{3cm}


cccc cccc cccc cccc cccc cccc cccc cccc 

\begin{noindlist}
\item 1 1 1 1 1 1
\item 2 2 2 2 2 2
\item 3 3 3 3 3 3
\end{noindlist}

dddd dddd dddd dddd dddd dddd dddd dddd 


\end{document}

---

In the edited question the white space is not glue it is a blank paragraph caused by an interaction between the strut added to p columns (including X) and list handling. Simplest is just to start a normal paragraph with \mbox{} to give the list a base to start from but insert some negative space to compensate.

& 
\mbox{}\par\vskip-2\baselineskip\mbox{}
\begin{noindlist}