Acronyms list size

Question

\appendix
\chapter{Acronyms}
\singlespace
 \begin{acronym}
 \acro{BLAS}{Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms}
 \acro{CLR}{Common Language Runtime}
 \acro{DBMS}{Data Base Management System}
 \acro{DBMSs}{Data Base Management Systems}
 \acro{DDL}{Data Definition Language}
 \acro{VDL}{View Definition language}
  ...
\end{acronym}

I am getting:

How can I reduce the size of the list? What would be the best approach to do so? Should I change the \singlespace?

Answer 1

I've now looked at the documentation for acronym. I'm going to assume that this is the package you're using. Since acronym is essentially a list environment, you can reset the parameters for lists:

 \begin{acronym}
 \setlength{\parskip}{0ex}
 \setlength{\itemsep}{1ex}
 \acro{BLAS}{Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms}
 \acro{CLR}{Common Language Runtime}
 \acro{DBMS}{Data Base Management System}
 \acro{DBMSs}{Data Base Management Systems}
 \acro{DDL}{Data Definition Language}
 \acro{VDL}{View Definition language}
 \end{acronym}

Alternatively You can muck with the baselineskip value, as I originally suggested. But this only has limited effect. I don't do much building of appendices and such. But I would guess that you should be able to change the baselineskip by setting

\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{<scale-factor>}%
\large\normalsize%

You have to say \large\normalsize since the baseline skip isn't changed until there's been a change in the font size. At the end of the appendix, you can then write

\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1}%
\large\normalsize%

to restore things to the usual.

Just in case your document might use a different baseline stretch factor, you could try the following

\chapter{Appendix}
\let\oldbaselinestretch=\baselinestretch%
\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{<scale-factor>}%
\large\normalsize%
\begin{acronym}
.
.
.
\end{acronym}
\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{\oldbaselinestretch}%
\large\normalsize%

NOTE

I've kept the part about rescaling the baselineskip, because you may need to do a combination of the two approaches, particularly if you're using some other package (such as a thesis package) that sets the usual baseline stretch to some value other that 1.