Remove space around bullet points in itemized or enumerated list

Question

How can I reduce the amount of space around items in an itemized or enumerated list? I would like to reduce the vertical space between items, the space to the left of the bullet, and the space between the bullet and the text.

Answer 1

The paralist package provides compressed lists, the new environments are called compactitem, compactenum and compactdesc. Use it just like the corresponding standard list environments. It can even keep lists within a paragraph.

The enumitem provides more features but also compressed lists, for instance by

\usepackage{enumitem}
\setlist{nolistsep,leftmargin=*}

\setlist modifies all lists, \setitemize just itemize etc. It takes an optional parameter that stands for the level that should be changed, default it alters all levels. Since enumitem allows a lot more customization I prefer it over paralist, but the latter is easier to use and fits better to the question here.

Answer 2

Complementing the answer provided by Stefan, we can use the enumitem to create a compact list using the \setlist{nolistsep} or parametrizing each component of \setlist, as following:

\setlist{
    topsep=0pt,
    partopsep=0pt,
    itemsep=0pt,
    parsep=0pt
}

Where topsep and partopsep are the vertical space between the list and the paragraphs, itemsep is the vertical space between items, and parsep is the vertical space between the item's paragraphs.

The below picture, from the enumitem manual, illustrates each parameter.

It is worth noticing that we can also change horizontal spacing for a even more compact list.