\jeff{krimmel}

Outlines With Enumerate In LaTeX

March 7, 2006 – 4:08 pm

I needed to find an easy way the other day to make a simple list in LaTeX. Specifically, I was recreating a problem set, and the problems were numbered one through three but were aligned nicely. I tried using the tabular environment to recreate it, but that wasn’t working. And then I found the enumerate environment.

Want to see a simple example?

I created this outline with the following TeX file:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}

\begin{enumerate}
\item This is the first item in my list.
\item Now I am on to the second item.
\item Here is the third and final item in my list.
\end{enumerate}

\end{document}

I can also create a list with a sub-list inside of it:

The above output was created with the following TeX file:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}

\begin{enumerate}
\item This is the first item in my list.
\begin{enumerate}
\item This is the first item in my sub-list.
\item Here is another sub-list item.
\end{enumerate}
\item Now I am on to the second item.
\item Here is the third and final item in my list.
\end{enumerate}

\end{document}

Do you want the outline to be lettered instead of numbered?

You can use the following code:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}

\renewcommand{\labelenumi}{\Alph{enumi}.}
\renewcommand{\labelenumii}{\alph{enumii}.}

\begin{enumerate}
\item This is the first item in my list.
\begin{enumerate}
\item This is the first item in my sub-list.
\item Here is another sub-list item.
\end{enumerate}
\item Now I am on to the second item.
\item Here is the third and final item in my list.
\end{enumerate}

\end{document}

Finally, what if you wanted the letters to be surrounded by parentheses?

You can just adjust the renewcommand statement, as in the following:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}

\renewcommand{\labelenumi}{(\Alph{enumi})}
\renewcommand{\labelenumii}{(\alph{enumii})}

\begin{enumerate}
\item This is the first item in my list.
\begin{enumerate}
\item This is the first item in my sub-list.
\item Here is another sub-list item.
\end{enumerate}
\item Now I am on to the second item.
\item Here is the third and final item in my list.
\end{enumerate}

\end{document}

In fact, you are at liberty to do a lot of things with the renewcommand statement. In the above example, I used \renewcommand{\labelenumi}{(\Alph{enumi})} to get a letter surrounded by parentheses. In the example above that, the {(\Alph{enumi})} was instead {\Alph{enumi}.}, where the parentheses were removed and a following period was added. You can remove the period to just display a letter with no accompanying punctuation.

If you wanted the first level of the outline to be numbered, but the second level to be lettered, you could use \renewcommand{\labelenumii}{(\alph{enumii})}, where you have only changed the second level of the outline.