# Arabic enumerating inside an alpha enumerating

I'm wondering how to show the original enumerating instead of alpha inside the list. enumitem package is included.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}[label=(\alph*)]
\item The first item
\begin{enumerate}[label*=\arabic*.]
\item Nested item 1
\item Nested item 2
\end{enumerate}
\item The second item
\item The third etc \ldots
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}


What the code gives:

What I want to achieve:

Am I missing something? Thanks in advance.

Just omit the * after label in the inner enumerate. The star appends the labelling of the outer ('parent') list to the inner list.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}[label={(\alph*)}]
\item The first item
\begin{enumerate}[label={\arabic*.}]
\item Nested item 1
\item Nested item 2
\end{enumerate}
\item The second item
\item The third etc \ldots
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}


• what is * doing after \alph and \arabic? Nov 14, 2018 at 21:54
• @FiboKowalsky: Reading the manual helps: It is an internal format for enumerate labels, in order to prevent the code using \alph and \arabic directly.
– user31729
Nov 15, 2018 at 16:35

Remove the * from the label= in the nested list:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}[label=(\alph*)]
\item The first item
\begin{enumerate}[label=\arabic*.]
\item Nested item 1
\item Nested item 2
\end{enumerate}
\item The second item
\item The third etc \ldots
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}


Gives you the list you want:

• Yes, it seems as if you were a little bit faster than me with writing your answer. When submitting mine, I didn't see there is another one. I'm new to stackexchange - how do you usually handle those "duplicate replys"? Shall I remove mine? Or just leave it there? Dec 8, 2015 at 20:16
• Apparently you're German: Wo kein Richter da kein Henker ;-) Willkommen bei TeX.SX -- der Guten Seite der Typographie ;-)
– user31729
Dec 8, 2015 at 20:18