Reduce size of \bullet character in lists

Question

Example for a list using mdwlist:

\begin{itemize*}
\item First
\item Second
\end{itemize*}

The bullet symbol for the first level can be redefined with:

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

It apparently uses a math environments symbol by default. I would like to reduce the size of it, but font size modifiers like \tiny seem to be invalid.

Answer 1

For centering material vertically you can use \vcenter, but this only works in math mode. Thus you need to enter math mode twice:

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

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

The suggestion to use \renewcommand{\labelitemi}{{\tiny$\bullet$}} actually seems to leave the alignment alone, in that the baseline of the bullet is the baseline of the text. If you'd like to raise it, though, you can use

\renewcommand{\labelitemi}{\raise .5ex\hbox{\tiny$\bullet$}}

Answer 4

In case that a tiny bullet is a specific demand, you could use the \textperiodcentered command from the textcomp package in conjunction with the enumitem package for a compact list.

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{textcomp}

\begin{document}
  \begin{itemize}[label=\textperiodcentered,nolistsep]
    \item First
    \item Second
  \end{itemize}
\end{document}