Align items on the left

Question

Please, how can I align items on the left (reduce horizontal spacing) ?

\begin{itemize}

\item[\textbullet]  first
\item[\textbullet]  second
\item[\textbullet] third

\end{itemize}

score 6 · Answer 1 · 2012-09-09T22:17:43.580

6

Easy job with enumitem package, using \setlist{labelsep=*} will do it globally.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[showframe]{geometry} %% used for showing frames
\usepackage{enumitem}
\setlist{labelsep=*} %% set here.
\begin{document}
\begin{itemize}
\item[\textbullet]  first
\item[\textbullet]  second
\item[\textbullet] third
\end{itemize}

\end{document}

If you want this locally for a single instance, you can use

\begin{itemize}[labelsep=*]

instead of setlist.

enter image description here

Also, instead of typing \textbullet every time, you can use

 \begin{itemize}[label=$\circ$]

(bullet comes by default in first level itemize environments, hence I used $\circ$ for a change.)

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[showframe]{geometry}
\usepackage{enumitem}
%%\setlist{labelsep=*}
\begin{document}
\begin{itemize}[labelsep=*,label=$\circ$]
\item  first
\item  second
\item third
\end{itemize}

\end{document}

enter image description here

If you want to reduce the spacing between the bullets and the text, use `leftmargin option like

\begin{itemize}[labelsep=*,leftmargin=1pc]

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[showframe]{geometry}
\usepackage{enumitem}
%%\setlist{labelsep=*}
\begin{document}
\begin{itemize}[labelsep=*,leftmargin=1pc]
\item  first
\item  second
\item third
\end{itemize}

\end{document}

enter image description here

Update: You can do it without any packages by adding

\setlength\leftmargini{1em}

to your preamble. Adjust the value 1em appropriately for your need.

edited Sep 09 '12 at 22:17

answered Sep 09 '12 at 16:07

\textbullet is used by default in first level itemize environments, so in your example it's useless. – egreg Sep 09 '12 at 16:24
@egreg: True. I have written it inside parenthesis before the second code. – Sep 09 '12 at 16:26
i add this \usepackage{enumitem}and \usepackage[showframe]{geometry} , the code is: \begin{itemize}[labelsep=*,leftmargin=1pc] \item first \item second \item third \end{itemize} but it did'nt work! i have this error Something's wrong--perhaps missing \item – researcher Sep 09 '12 at 16:55
Have you an idea please about the error ? – researcher Sep 09 '12 at 17:26
@researcher: Perhaps you don't have enumitem installed? What distribution are you running? See How do I update my TeX distribution? – Werner Sep 09 '12 at 17:40
i have used this code \begin{list}{\labelitemi}{\leftmargin=1em}\item first \end{list} and it works – researcher Sep 10 '12 at 09:14

Align items on the left

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