How can I get proper paragraph handling in itemize environments?

Question

I'm using the itemize environment to answer a list of questions, because the output is compact and neat. However, when I need more than one paragraph in one item, the second one is not indented, as it would have been outside of itemize.

\begin{itemize}

    \item[1.]

    This is the first paragraph of this item.

    This the second paragraph of this item, and it is not indented.

\end{itemize}

How do I fix this? Or am I just treating itemize and \item wrong, and should really try to redefine \section to this effect to make my document semantically more correct?

Answer 1

By default, lists use parameters for indentation of (follow-up) paragraphs and vertical spacing between paragraphs that are different from those of running text. You may use the enumitem package to change the list parameters.

EDIT: Instead of using itemize plus a custom label, consider using the enumerate environment.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{enumitem}
\setlist{parsep=0pt,listparindent=\parindent}

\begin{document}

\begin{enumerate}

    \item

    This is the first paragraph of this item.

    This the second paragraph of this item, and now it is properly indented.
    (That is, only the first line.)

\end{enumerate}

\end{document}