# How to correctly shrink the bullets of itemize

How can I shrink the bullets of itemize without change its positioning and the centering versus the items? My code below show that behaviour in fact the two item underneath have a bullet shifted down respect the other two above...

\documentclass{book}

\begin{document}

\begin{itemize}
\item One
\item Two
\end{itemize}

\renewcommand\labelitemi{\tiny$\bullet$}

\begin{itemize}
\item One
\item Two
\end{itemize}

\end{document}


You can raise the bullet to your liking. The following does that (to the extreme):

\documentclass{article}
\newlength{\mylen}
\setbox1=\hbox{$\bullet$}\setbox2=\hbox{\tiny$\bullet$}
\setlength{\mylen}{\dimexpr0.5\ht1-0.5\ht2}

\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}% Just for this example
\begin{document}

\begin{minipage}{0.3\linewidth}
\begin{itemize}
\item One
\item Two
\end{itemize}
\end{minipage}\begin{minipage}{0.3\linewidth}
\renewcommand\labelitemi{\tiny$\bullet$}
\begin{itemize}
\item One
\item Two
\end{itemize}
\end{minipage}\begin{minipage}{0.3\linewidth}
\renewcommand\labelitemi{\raisebox{\mylen}{\tiny$\bullet$}}
\begin{itemize}
\item One
\item Two
\end{itemize}
\end{minipage}
\end{document}


On the left is the default $\bullet$. The middle shows \tiny$bullet$ while the last shows a raised \tiny$\bullet$ to exactly the same vertical height as it should be for $\bullet$. However, as mentioned, this is a bit extreme. You could avoid all the length calculations and just use \raisebox{0.25ex}{\tiny$\bullet$} which yields a comparable positioning.

I would also suggest using enumitem which allows you to obtain a similar output using

\begin{itemize}[label=\raisebox{0.25ex}{\tiny$\bullet$}]
%...
\end{itemize}

• Why did not you put \relax after \ht2? Jun 15 '13 at 19:12
• @FormlessCloud This is not necessary inside \setlength
– yo'
Jun 15 '13 at 19:46
• @Werner, can you phrase your answer also in terms of \setdefaultitem? Sep 19 '15 at 10:12
• @einpoklum: And what is \setdefaultitem?
– Werner
Sep 20 '15 at 20:24
• @Werner: Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that: the paralist package's \setdefaultitem. Sep 20 '15 at 22:30

using \tiny shifts the math axis so the vertical alignment of the bullet, so what you want is not a smaller font but a smaller symbol in the same font set (or to raise the symbol by hand)

\documentclass{book}

\begin{document}

\begin{itemize}
\item One
\item Two
\end{itemize}

\renewcommand\labelitemi{$\cdot$}

\begin{itemize}
\item One
\item Two
\end{itemize}

\renewcommand\labelitemi{{\boldmath$\cdot$}}

\begin{itemize}
\item One
\item Two
\end{itemize}

\end{document}

• Good answer too, but I chose the other because I can simply use the LaTeX's font size commands to chose how big make the bullets : ) Jun 15 '13 at 19:15

The smaller symbol can be centered around the original math axis via \vcenter:

\documentclass{book}
\begin{document}

\begin{itemize}
\item One
\item Two
\end{itemize}

\renewcommand\labelitemi{$\vcenter{\hbox{\tiny$\bullet$}}$}

\begin{itemize}
\item One
\item Two
\end{itemize}

\end{document}


• This is the most straightforward answer in my opinion. Jul 23 '18 at 18:08
• Nice answer. But I would suggest to use \scriptsize instead of \tiny because this will give a bullet that has the same size as a \textbullet with the lmodern package. Mar 5 '20 at 9:50