How to change colon into dot in description list?

Question

I use amsbook document class.

In description environment there is a colon after every item label.

I want dot instead colon. How?

Note that I already use \usepackage{enumitem} as it was suggested in an answer to my previous question.

Answer 1

You have to redefine \descriptionlabel, nothing that enumitem is supposed to be able to do. This is the standard definition

\newcommand{\descriptionlabel}[1]{%
  \hspace\labelsep \upshape\bfseries #1:%
}

so you want to say

\renewcommand{\descriptionlabel}[1]{%
  \hspace\labelsep \upshape\bfseries #1.%
}

in your document preamble.

\documentclass{amsbook}

\renewcommand{\descriptionlabel}[1]{%
  \hspace\labelsep \upshape\bfseries #1.%
}

\begin{document}

\begin{description}
\item[Gnu] A big animal
\item[Gnat] A small animal
\end{description}

\end{document}

Answer 2

Set the way the label is formatted using the before key (mentioned in the enumitem documentation (p 4)):

\documentclass{amsart}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\begin{document}

\begin{description}
  \item[abc] one
  \item[def] two
  \item[ghi] three
\end{description}

\begin{description}[before={\renewcommand\makelabel[1]{\bfseries ##1.}}]
  \item[abc] one
  \item[def] two
  \item[ghi] three
\end{description}

\end{document}