55

This should be an easy question for someone out there. I have a description list

\begin{description} \item[Name:] Halpo \item[Email Address:] [email protected] \item[Address:] 1234 Ivy Ln \\ Springfield, USA \end{description}

It comes back as

Name: Halpo

Email Address: [email protected]

Address: 1234 Ivy Ln

 Springfield, USA

This is for an official document that has style requirements. The First thing is how do I turn off the bold? second how do I have all the text line up with the item labels and still be left justified?

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  • 12
    Belongs on tex.stackexchange.com Commented Feb 6, 2012 at 4:05
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    This question appears to be off-topic because it is about tex (but is too old to migrate). Commented Sep 24, 2013 at 13:14

4 Answers 4

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76

If you \usepackage{enumitem} you may get what you like:

\begin{description}[style=multiline,leftmargin=3cm,font=\normalfont] \item[Name:] Halpo \item[Email Address:] [email protected] \item[Address:] 1234 Ivy Ln \\ Springfield, USA \end{description}

Results in:

Results

Check here for full package documentation.

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1 Comment

It would be nice if the leftmargin parameter could be automatic. Does anybody know how to do that?
27

The formatting of description labels is controlled by the command \descriptionlabel. Here's an example of changing to italics, no bold:

\renewcommand{\descriptionlabel}[1]{\hspace{\labelsep}\textit{#1}}

To change the formatting of the label to something else, change the \textit{#1} part above.

EDIT 2017-01-24: My original example used \emph, but as @ebo pointed out, it is better to use \textit for this situation because this is a case of changing the text style, not emphasizing text.

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3 Comments

be aware that nested uses of \emph will toggle between italics and Roman.
@SeanAllred Indeed, instead of \emph{#1} (that states you want to emphasize the text), one should use \textit{#1} (that says you want the text to be printed with italicized font).
@ebo You make a very good point. I will indicate this in the answer, for the benefit of future readers.
7

Geoff - you can set these parameters for all lists (so that it's automatic) using this code:

\setlist[description]{style=multiline,leftmargin=3cm}

Apologies, I don't have enough rep to reply to your comment, hence the separate answer.

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2 Comments

Thanks for the note. What I meant was for the 3cm to be computed automatically. This is helpful though.
Yes, it was replying to Geoff's comment above (the accepted answer). It's for the enumitem package: \usepackage{enumitem}. See his answer for more details.
2

For a hack, do \item[\rm Name:].

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