# Remove indentation on description list

Ok, I looked at some answers, and they suggest to use the package enumitem and the option [leftmargin=*].

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}

\begin{document}
\section{Foo}
\subsection{Bar}
\subsection{Foobar}
\paragraph{Fubar}
\begin{description}[leftmargin=*]
\item[First Item] The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
\item[Second Item] The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
\end{description}
\end{document}


But this does not completely remove the indentation. Here's the result (notice the space before "fox").

On the other hand, leftmargin=0cm works, but I'm afraid it's not the same thing.

If the whole list is indented, I want the wrapped text to indent under at the start of the label, not at the left margin of the page.

I'm using a fresh installation of the latest MikTex (21 Oct 2014) x64, together with the latest TexStudio (2.8.6) on Windows 7 SP1 x64.

• Welcome to TeX.SX! What do you mean by "it's not the same thing?". You should adapt your example code in order to show a situation where your whole list is indented. Nov 10, 2014 at 13:58
• @LaRiFaRi I'm not sure it's the same thing, it's just something I tried. I'm sure you can find/encounter a situation where the whole list is indented. Nov 10, 2014 at 14:08
• leftmargin=0cm is the answer Nov 10, 2014 at 14:09
• As far as I know, the \leftmargin dimension is always relative to an existing indentation
– user31729
Nov 10, 2014 at 14:09
• @ChristianHupfer Thanks, I'd upvote your comment if I had the rep Nov 10, 2014 at 14:12

Use \leftmargin=0pt to shift the indentation to the left boundary, this works in multiply nested lists.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}

\begin{document}
\section{Foo}
\subsection{Bar}
\subsection{Foobar}
\paragraph{Fubar}
\begin{itemize}
\item
\begin{description}[leftmargin=0pt]
\item[First Item] The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
\item[Second Item] The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
\end{description}
\end{itemize}
\end{document}


• you don't need environment itemize, nor that extra \item. It's enough to replace [leftmargin=*] with [leftmargin=0pt]. Nov 10, 2014 at 14:13
• @RicoRally: It was just an example to show that the text of the inner list is aligned correctly nevertheless!
– user31729
Nov 10, 2014 at 14:15
• Upvoting, anyway. :) I thought it could be even more useful. Nov 10, 2014 at 14:16
• BTW any idea why the paragraph "bold" looks smaller than the bold of the description items? Nov 10, 2014 at 14:22
• @Agostino: I should have a look on the standard paragraph fontsize...
– user31729
Nov 10, 2014 at 14:27

You can also use [wide=0\parindent]:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}

\begin{document}
\section{Foo}
\subsection{Bar}
\subsection{Foobar}
\paragraph{Fubar}
\begin{description}[wide=0\parindent]
\item[First Item] The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
\item[Second Item] The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
\end{description}
\end{document}


• What's the difference? Nov 10, 2014 at 14:21
• @Agostino It is another method. Take it that way.
– user11232
Nov 10, 2014 at 14:22
• I know this is an old thread, but for me this one worked better, since @user31729's approach sent the text past my document-wide margins. This one just filled out the text up until the document margins, without adding more for the list. Apr 27 at 21:22
{"extraction_info": {"found_math": true, "script_math_tex": 0, "script_math_asciimath": 0, "math_annotations": 0, "math_alttext": 0, "mathml": 0, "mathjax_tag": 0, "mathjax_inline_tex": 0, "mathjax_display_tex": 0, "mathjax_asciimath": 1, "img_math": 0, "codecogs_latex": 0, "wp_latex": 0, "mimetex.cgi": 0, "/images/math/codecogs": 0, "mathtex.cgi": 0, "katex": 0, "math-container": 0, "wp-katex-eq": 0, "align": 0, "equation": 0, "x-ck12": 0, "texerror": 0, "math_score": 0.4424738585948944, "perplexity": 1927.1909410873054}, "config": {"markdown_headings": true, "markdown_code": true, "boilerplate_config": {"ratio_threshold": 0.3, "absolute_threshold": 10, "end_threshold": 15, "enable": true}, "remove_buttons": true, "remove_image_figures": true, "remove_link_clusters": true, "table_config": {"min_rows": 2, "min_cols": 3, "format": "plain"}, "remove_chinese": true, "remove_edit_buttons": true, "extract_latex": true}, "warc_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-21/segments/1652662644142.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20220529103854-20220529133854-00029.warc.gz"}