54

This forum thread is exactly what I'm looking for. I want my description environment to produce this:

Label is long   text 
lab2            blalballalaa
label3          possible second rule
label four      hello world

Someone offered this:

\newenvironment{mydescription}[1]                                                
  {\begin{list}{}%
   {\renewcommand\makelabel[1]{##1:\hfill}%
   \settowidth\labelwidth{\makelabel{#1}}%
   \setlength\leftmargin{\labelwidth}
   \addtolength\leftmargin{\labelsep}}}
  {\end{list}}

Which works great (the parameter is the longest label), except I think the enumitem should be able to do this. Unfortunately, the documentation for it is extremely confusing to me. Could someone show me how to achieve the same result with enumitem?

mk12
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2 Answers2

83

This is one possibility:

\documentclass{article}  
\usepackage{calc}  
\usepackage{enumitem}  

\begin{document}

\begin{description}[leftmargin=!,labelwidth=\widthof{\bfseries The longest label}]
  \item[The longest label] text
  \item[Short]  long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long text
\end{description}

\end{document}

enter image description here

Gonzalo Medina
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    Thanks for the leftmargin=! option! – paulequilibrio Nov 12 '16 at 15:28
  • I might be doing something wrong, but the same description is giving me the following error: Something's wrong--perhaps a missing \item. ^^I\item[The longest label] – Jakub Arnold Jul 03 '19 at 15:38
  • What does the leftmargin=! do? – debsim Nov 22 '20 at 15:34
  • @JakubArnold I have seen the same error and it went away after including the enumitem package like shown in the example. Copying the options alone isn't enough. – tomka Mar 04 '21 at 08:42
  • If you put \hfill before each item label (such as \item[\hfill Short]), then the labels will be right-aligned. Is there a better way to do this? – Paul Wintz Dec 31 '23 at 08:52
4

A solution using the scrextend package (taken from WikiBooks):

\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage{scrextend}
\begin{document}
\begin{labeling}{alligator}  % alligator is the longest label
    \item [\textbf{ant}]really busy all the time
    \item [chimp] likes bananas
    \item [alligator] very dangerous animal, sharp teeth, long
     muscular tail and a bit of text that is longer than one
     line and shows the alignment of text quite nicely
\end{labeling}
\end{document}

enter image description here

Maximilian Janisch
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