6.2.1 Itemized lists

To create an itemized list, use the the itemize environment:

\begin{itemize}

\item Itemized lists usually have a bullet;

\item Long items use `hanging indentation', 
whereby the text is wrapped with a margin 
which brings it clear of the bullet used in 
the first line of each item;

\item The bullet can be changed for any other 
symbol, for example from the \textsf{bbding} 
or \textsf{pifont} package.

\end{itemize}

 

• Itemized lists usually have a bullet;

• Long items use ‘hanging indentation’, whereby the text is wrapped with a margin which brings it clear of the bullet used in the first line of each item;

• The bullet can be changed for any other symbol, for example from the bbding or pifont package.

The default list bullet is round and solid¹ (舦) which is also available with the command \textbullet if you load the textcomp package. See section 9.6.1 for details of how to change the settings for list item bullets.

1. If your browser font doesn't show it, don't worry: some don't. LATEX will.

6.2.2 Enumerated lists

To create an enumerated list, use the enumerate environment:

\begin{enumerate}

\item Enumerated lists use numbering on each 
item (can also be letters or roman numerals);

\item Long items use `hanging indentation' 
just the same as for itemized lists;

\item The numbering system can be changed for 
any level.

\end{enumerate}

 

1. Enumerated lists use numbering on each item (can also be letters or roman numerals);

2. Long items use ‘hanging indentation’, just the same as for itemized lists;

3. The numbering system can be changed for any level.

See section 6.2.6 for details of how to change the numbering schemes for each level.

In standard LATEX document classes, the vertical spacing between items, and above and below the lists as a whole, is more than between paragraphs. If you want tightly-packed lists, use the mdwlist package, which provides ‘starred’ versions (itemize*, enumerate*, etc.).

6.2.3 Description lists

To create a description list, use the description environment:

\begin{description}

\item[Identification:] description lists 
require a topic for each item given in 
square brackets;

\item[Hanging indentation:] Long items use 
this in the same way as all other lists;

\item[Reformatting:] Long topics can be 
reprogrammed to fold onto multiple lines.

\end{description}

 

Identification:

description lists require a topic for each item given in square brackets;

Hanging indentation:

Long items use this in the same way as all other lists;

Reformatting:

Long topics can be reprogrammed to fold onto multiple lines.

All three of these types of lists can have multiple paragraphs per item: just type the additional paragraphs in the normal way, with a blank line between each. So long as they are still contained within the enclosing environment, they will automatically be indented to follow underneath their item.

6.2.4 Inline lists

Inline lists are a special case as they require the use of the paralist package which provides the inparaenum environment (with an optional formatting specification in square brackets).

\usepackage{paralist}
...
\textbf{\itshape Inline lists}, which are sequential 
in nature, just like enumerated lists, but are 
\begin{inparaenum}[\itshape a\upshape)]
  \item formatted within their paragraph; 
  \item usually labelled with letters; and 
  \item usually have the final item prefixed with 
        `and' or `or'
\end{inparaenum}, 
like this example.

 

Inline lists, which are sequential in nature, just like enumerated lists, but are a) formatted within their paragraph; b) usually labelled with letters; c) usually have the final item prefixed with ‘and’ or ‘or’, like this example.

See Chapter 8 for details of the font-changing commands used in the optional argument to inparaenum.

  Exercise 15. List practice

Add some lists to your document. Pick any two of the ones described here to practice with.

If you successfully installed paralist in the example ‘Install a package’ in section 5.2.2 then you can use inline lists as described in section 6.2.4.

6.2.5 Reference lists and segmented lists

Reference lists are visually indistinguishable from numbered or lettered lists, but the numbering or lettering does not imply a sequence. The numbers or letters are just used as labels so that the items can be referred to from elsewhere in the text (as in ‘see item 501(c)3’). In this sense they are really a kind of sub-sectional division, and LATEX's \paragraph or \subparagraph commands (with appropriate renumbering) would probably be a far better solution than using a list. Label them and refer to them with \label and \ref as for any other cross-reference (see section 7.4).

Segmented lists are a highly specialised structure and outside the scope of this document. For details of their usage, see the chapter ‘Segmentation and Alignment’ (17) in Lou Burnard and Michael Sperberg-McQueen's TEI Guidelines.

6.2.6 Lists within lists

You can start a new list environment within the item of an existing list, so you can embed one list inside another up to four deep. The lists can be of any type, so you can have a description list containing an item in which there is a numbered sub-list, within which there is an item containing a bulleted sub-sub-list.

1. by default an outer enumerated list is numbered in Arabic numerals;

   1. an embedded enumerated list is lettered in lowercase;

      1. a third level is numbered in lowercase Roman numerals;

         1. the fourth level uses uppercase alphabetic letters.

Multiple embedded lists automatically change the bullet or numbering scheme so that the levels don't get confused, and the spacing between levels is adjusted to become fractionally tighter for more deeply nested levels.

These are only defaults and can easily be changed by redefining the relevant set of values. You could also add a fifth and further levels, although I suspect that would mean your document structure needed some careful analysis, as lists embedded five deep will probably confuse your readers.

The values for lists come in pairs: for each level there is a counter to count the items and a command to produce the label:²

Note that each counter and command ends with the Roman numeral value of its level (this is to overcome the rule that LATEX commands can only be made of letters — digits wouldn't work here). To change the format of a numbered list item counter, just renew the meaning of its label:

\renewcommand{\theenumi}{\Alph{enumi}}
\renewcommand{\theenumii}{\roman{enumii}}
\renewcommand{\theenumiii}{\arabic{enumiii}}

This would make the outermost list use uppercase letters, the second level use lowercase roman, and the third level use ordinary Arabic numerals. The fourth level would remain unaffected.

  Exercise 16. Nesting

Extend your use of lists by nesting one type inside a different one.

  Lists and Tables: a caution to the unwary

Treat lists with care: people sometimes use tables for labelled information which is really a list and would be better handled as such. They often do this because their wordprocessor has no way to do what they want (usually to place the item label level with the description or explanation) except by using a table, hence they are misled into believing that their text is really a table when it's actually not.

2. In fact, any time you define a counter in LATEX, you automatically get a command to reproduce its value. So if you defined a new counter example to use in a teaching book, by saying \newcounter{example}, that automatically makes available the command \theexample for use when you want to display the current value of example.

6.3.1 Floats

Tables and Figures are what printers and publishers refer to as ‘floats’. This means they are not part of the normal stream of text, but separate entities, positioned in a part of the page to themselves (top, middle, bottom, left, right, or wherever the designer specifies). They always have a caption describing them and they are always numbered so they can be referred to from elsewhere in the text.

LATEX automatically floats Tables and Figures, depending on how much space is left on the page at the point that they are processed. If there is not enough room on the current page, the float is moved to the top of the next page. This can be changed by moving the Table or Figure definition to an earlier or later point in the text, or by adjusting some of the parameters which control automatic floating.

Authors sometimes have many floats occurring in rapid succession, which raises the problem of how they are supposed to fit on the page and still leave room for text. In this case, LATEX stacks them all up and prints them together if possible, or leaves them to the end of the chapter in protest. The skill is to space them out within your text so that they intrude neither on the thread of your argument or discussion, nor on the visual balance of the typeset pages. But this is a skill few authors have, and it's one point at which professional typographic advice or manual intervention may be needed.

There is a float package which lets you create new classes of floating object (perhaps Examples or Exercises), and it also implements a method of forcing a float not to float (that is, to appear where it occurs in the text, even if that breaks the page).

6.3.2 Formal tables

To create a LATEX Table, use the table environment containing a \caption command where you put the caption, followed by a \label command to give the Table a label by which you can refer to it.

\begin{table}
\caption{Project expenditure to year-end 2012}
\label{ye2012exp}
...
\end{table}

Numbering is automatic, but the \label command must follow the \caption command, not precede it. The numbering automatically includes the chapter number in document classes where this is appropriate (but this can of course be overridden). The \caption command has an optional argument to provide a short caption if the full caption would be too long for the List of Tables:

\caption[Something short]{Some very long caption that 
will only look reasonable in the full figure.}

6.3.3 Tabular matter

Within a Table, you can either typeset the tabular matter using LATEX, or include a table captured as an image from elsewhere. We will see how to include images in section 6.4 on Figures, where they are more common.

To typeset tabular matter, use the tabular environment. You follow the \begin{tabular} command with a compulsory second argument in curly braces giving the alignment of the columns. These are specified for each column using one of single letters l, c, and r for left-aligned, centered, or right-aligned text, or the letter p followed by a width argument if you want a long entry to wrap to several lines.

TEX's original tabular settings were designed for classical numerical tabulations, where each cell contains a single value. The p specification allows a cell to be a miniature paragraph set to a specific width. These p column specifications are not multi-row (row-spanned) entries, they are single cells which contain multiple lines of typesetting: the distinction is very important. Auto-adjusting columns are possible with the tabularx and tabulary packages, offering different approaches to dynamic table formatting.

The array package provides for many other typographic variations such as left-aligned, right-aligned, and centred multi-line columns, and the prefixing of a column specification with formatting to be applied to all cells in that column, saving you having to enter it in every cell. The colortbl package lets you colour rows, columns, and cells; and the dcolumn package provides decimal-aligned columns. Multi-column (column-spanning) is built into LATEX tables; for multi-row (row-spanning) cells you need the multirow package. Multi-page and rotated (landscape format) tables can be done with the longtable, rotating, and landscape packages.

As an example, the tabular setting illustrated has three columns, the first one centered, the second left-aligned, and the third one right-aligned, and would therefore be specified as {clr}. Note the use of indentation to make the elements of the table clearer for editing, and note also how the typeset formatting is unaffected by this (see Table 6.1).

\begin{table}
  \caption{Project expenditure to year-end 2012}
  \label{ye2012exp}
  \begin{center}
    \begin{tabular}{clr}
      &Item&\EUR\ Amount\\
    \hline
      a)&Salaries (2 research assistants)&28,000\\
        &Conference fees and travel expenses&14,228\\
        &Computer equipment (5 workstations)&17,493\\
        &Software&3,562\\
      b)&Rent, light, heat, etc.&1,500\\\cline{3-3}
        &Total&64,783
    \end{tabular}
    \par\medskip\footnotesize
The Institute also contributes to (a) and (b).
  \end{center}
\end{table}

If you copy and paste this into your example document, you will need to add the marvosym package which enables the CEC-conformant € symbol \EUR.

You do not need to format the tabular data in your editor: LATEX does this for you when it typesets the table, using the column specifications you provided. Takaaki Ota provides an excellent Tables mode for Emacs which provides a spreadsheet-like interface and can generate LATEX table source code (see Figure 6.1). Winedt and TEXnicCenter both have a similar graphical table-editing mode. If your tabular data comes from outside LATEX, Nicola Talbot's excellent datatool package allows the import of data from (e.g.) spreadsheet .csv files.

Extra space is automatically added on both sides of all columns, and can be adjusted by changing the value of the \tabcolsep dimension before you begin the tabular environment.

To change the line-spacing in a tabular setting, you can redefine the arraystretch command with renewcommand. arraystretch is a multiplier, preset to 1, so setting it to 1.5 would make the lines of your tabular settings one and a half times more than normal. You can increase the line-spacing after an individual row by following the double backslash with a dimension in square brackets, for example \\[6pt] (negative values decrease the line-spacing).

It is conventional to centre the tabular setting within the Table, using the center environment (note US spelling) or the \centering command. The entries for each cell are separated by an ampersand character (&) and the end of a row is marked by the double-backslash (\\).

The \hline command draws a rule across all columns and the \cline command draws a rule across a range of columns (here, under column three only — the argument needs a range). If used, these commands follow the \\ of the row they apply to. There are some extra formatting commands after the tabular material in the example. These are explained in Chapter 8.

If there is no data for a cell, just don't type anything — but you still need the & separating it from the next column's data. The astute reader will already have deduced that for a table of n columns, there must always be n−1 ampersands in each row. The exception to this is when the \multicolumn command is used to create cells which span multiple columns. There is also a package (multirow) to enable cells to span multiple rows, but both of these techniques are outside the scope of this document.

6.3.4 Tabular techniques for alignment

As mentioned earlier, it's also perfectly possible to typeset tabular matter outside a formal Table, where you want to lay out an informal tabulation between paragraphs where a fully floating formal Table would be unnecessary (these are usually quite short: there are several of them in this document).

Tabular mode can also be used wherever you need to align material side by side, such as in designing letterheads, where you may want your company logo and address on one side and some other information on the other.

By default, LATEX typesets tabular environments inline to the surrounding text (i.e. within the paragraph), so if you want your alignment displayed by itself, put it inside a positioning environment like center, flushright, or flushleft, or leave a blank line or \par before and after so it gets typeset separately.

There is much more to tabular setting: full details are in the manuals mentioned in the the last paragraph in the Foreword. One final note to remind you of the automated crossreferencing features: because the example table is labelled, it can be referenced from anywhere in this document as Table 6.1 just by using \ref{ye2012exp}, regardless of how much the surrounding document or structure is moved or edited.

  Exercise 17. Create a tabulation

Create one of the following in your document:

• a formal Table with a caption showing the number of people in your class broken down by age and sex;

• an informal tabulation showing the price for three products;

• the logo (hint: section 6.7.2).

1. You may find a lot of old files which use a package called epsf. Don't use it: it's obsolete.
2. Some commercial distributions of TEX systems allow other formats to be used, such as GIF, Microsoft Bitmap (BMP), or Hewlett-Packard's Printer Control Language (PCL) files, and others, by using additional conversion software provided by the supplier; but you cannot send such documents to other LATEX users and expect them to work if they don't have the same distribution installed as you have. If you use standard LATEX, stick to EPS.
3. Strictly speaking the exact order (from the newest definition in pdftex.def) is .png, .pdf, .jpg, .mps, .jpeg, .jbig2, .jb2, .PNG, .PDF, .JPG, .JPEG, .JBIG2, and .JB2. Thanks to Enrico Gregorio and Philipp Stephani on comp.text.tex for locating this.

6.5.1 Making images

There are two types of image: bitmaps and vectors.

Bitmaps

Bitmap images are made of coloured dots, so if you enlarge them, they go jagged at the edges, and if you shrink them, they go blurry. Bitmaps are fine for photographs, where every dot is a different colour, and no-one will notice if you don't shrink or enlarge too much. Bitmaps for diagrams and drawings, however, are almost always the wrong choice, and often disastrously bad.

Vectors

Vector drawings are made from instructions (eg ‘draw this from here to here, using a line this thick’). They can be enlarged or shrunk as much as you like, and never lose accuracy, because they get redrawn automatically at any size. You can't do photographs as vectors, but it's the only acceptable method for drawings or diagrams.

Vector graphic packages are also better suited for saving your image directly in EPS or PDF format (both of which use vectors internally). All the major graphics-generating packages in all disciplines output vector formats: AutoCAD, ChemDraw, MathCAD, Maple, Mathematica, ArcInfo, and so on. EPS is the universally-accepted format for creating vector graphics for publication, with PDF a close second. Most of the major graphics (drawing) packages can also save as EPS, such as PhotoShop, PaintShop Pro, Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, and GIMP. There are also some free vector plotting and diagramming packages available like InkScape, tkPaint, and GNUplot which do the same. Never, ever (except in the direst necessity) create any diagram as a bitmap.

Bitmap formats like JPG and PNG are ideal for photographs, as they are also able to compress the data substantially without too much loss of quality. However, compressed formats are bad for screenshots, if you are documenting computer tasks, because too much compression makes them blurry. The popular Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is good for screenshots, but is not supported by TEX: use PNG instead, with the compression turned down to minimum. Avoid uncompressible formats like BMP as they produce enormous and unmanageable files. The Tagged Image File Format (TIFF), popular with graphic designers, should also be avoided because far too many companies have designed and implemented non-standard, conflicting, proprietary extensions to the format, making it virtually useless for transfer between different types of computers (except in faxes, where it's still used in a much stricter version).

  Exercise 18. Adding pictures

Add \usepackage{graphicx} to the preamble of your document, and copy or download an image you want to include. Make sure it is a JPG, PNG, or PDF image if you use pdfLATEX, or an EPS image if you use standard LATEX.

Add \includegraphics and the filename in curly braces (without the filetype), and process the document and preview or print it.

Make it into a figure following the example in section 6.4.

Be aware that some DVI previewers are not able to display all types of graphics, and some cannot display colour. For best results, use PDF or PostScript preview.

6.5.2 Graphics storage

I mentioned earlier that there was a way to tell LATEX where to look if you had stored images centrally for use in many different documents. The answer is in a command \graphicspath which you supply with an argument giving one or more names of additional directories you want searched when a file uses the \includegraphics command, for example:

\graphicspath{{c:/mypict~1/camera}}
\graphicspath{{/var/lib/images}{/home/peter/Pictures}}

Put the path in an additional set of curly braces (this lets you add more paths later: each in their own subset of curly braces). I've used the ‘safe’ (MS-DOS) form of the Windows My Pictures folder in the example because it's A Bad Idea to use directory names containing spaces (see the panel ‘Picking suitable filenames’ in chapter 4). Using \graphicspath does make your file less portable, though, because file paths tend to be specific both to an operating system and to your computer, like the examples above.

If you use dvips to print with or to generate PostScript files, be aware that some versions will not by default handle EPS files which are outside the current directory, and issue the error message that it is unable to find the image. This is because PostScript is a programming language, and it would theoretically be possible for a maliciously-made image to contain code which might compromise your system. The decision to restrict operation in this way has been widely criticised, but it seems unlikely to be changed. If you are certain that your EPS files are kosher, use the R0 option in your command, e.g. \dvips -R0 dvifile

1. The original term Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is now deprecated in favour of the more accurate Uniform Resource Indicator (URI). For details see http://www.w3.org/Addressing/. Unfortunately the older term still persists, especially in LATEX and XML markup.

6.6.1 Inline verbatim

To specify a word or phrase as verbatim text in typewriter type within a sentence, use the special command \verb, followed by your piece of text surrounded by any suitable character which does not occur in the text itself. This is a very rare exception to the rule that arguments go in curly braces. I often use the plus sign for this, for example to show a LATEX command, I type \verb+\includegraphics[width=3in]{myhouse}+ in order to display \includegraphics[width=3in]{myhouse}, but sometimes I use the grave accent (backtick or open-quote) or the vertical bar when the phrase already has a plus sign in it, like \verb|\(y=a+2x^2\)| when illustrating the LATEX equation \(y=a+x^2\).

This command has the advantage that it turns off all special characters (see section 2.4) except the one you use as the delimiter, so you can easily quote sequences of characters in any computer syntax — including TEX — without problems. However, LATEX will never break the argument of \verb at a line-end when formatting a paragraph, even if it contains spaces, so if it happens to be long, and falls towards the end of a line, it will stick out into the margin. See section 2.7.2 for more information on line-ends and hyphenation.

The url package avoids this by providing the command \url which works in the same way as \verb, but uses the standard curly braces to enclose the string of characters. The big difference between \verb and \url is that the latter performs a hyphenless break at punctuation characters, as in http://
latex.silmaril.ie/formattinginformation/index.html#microformats. It was designed for Web URIs, so it understands their syntax and will never break mid-way through an unpunctuated word, only at slashes and full points (and never at embedded hyphens). Bear in mind, however, that spaces and non-ASCII characters are forbidden in URIs, so using spaces in a \url argument will fail, as will using other non-URI-valid characters.

6.6.2 Display verbatim

For longer (multiline) chunks of fixed-format text, use the verbatim environment:

\begin{verbatim}
\documentclass[11pt,a4paper,oneside]{report}
\begin{document}

\title{Practical Typesetting}
\author{Peter Flynn\\Silmaril Consultants}
\date{December 2004}
\maketitle

\end{document}
\end{verbatim}

Like \verb, this turns off all special characters, so you can include anything at all in the verbatim text except the exact line \end{verbatim}

For more control over formatting, however, I recommend the use of the fancyvrb package, which provides a Verbatim environment (note the capital letter) which lets you draw a rule round the verbatim text, change the font size, and even have typographic effects inside the Verbatim environment. It can also be used in conjunction with the fancybox package (see section 6.7.3), and it can add reference line numbers (useful for chunks of data or programming), and it can even include entire external files.

  Exercise 19. Try some fixed-format text

Add your email address and home page URI using the \verb and \url commands. You'll need to \usepackage{url} for the latter.

If you know some programming, try a few lines enclosed in verbatim and Verbatim environments.

6.7.1 Boxes of text

Because of this box model, LATEX can typeset any text into a box of any width. The simplest command for small amounts of text is \parbox. This command needs two arguments in curly braces: the first is the width you want the text set to, and the second is the text itself, as in the example shown.

\parbox{1in}{Please make sure you send in your 
             completed forms by January 1st 
             next year, or the penalty clause 
             2(a) will apply}

 

Please make sure you send in your completed forms by January 1st next year, or the penalty clause 2(a) will apply

The text is typeset to the required width, and the box is extended downwards for as long as is required to fit the text. Note that the baseline of a \parbox is set to the midpoint of the box; that is, if you include a \parbox in mid-sentence, the centre of the box will be lined up with the line of type currently being set. You can specify that the top or bottom should align with any surrounding text by adding an optional t or b in square brackets before the width. For example, \parbox[t]{1in}{...} will produce

Notice that when setting very narrow measures with type that is too large, the words may not fit nicely and the spacing may become uneven or there may be too much hyphenation. Either use \raggedright or reduce the type size, or (in extreme cases) reword the text or break each line by hand. It is rare for LATEX to need this: the example above was deliberately chosen to be obtuse as an illustration of excessive spacing.

Where the contents is more extensive or more complicated, you can use the minipage environment.

\begin{minipage}{3in}
  Please make sure you send in your completed 
  forms by January 1st next year, or the 
  penalty clause 2(a) will apply.
  \begin{itemize}
    \item Incomplete forms will be returned to 
          you unprocessed.
    \item Forms must be accompanied by the 
          correct fee.
    \item There is no appeal. The adjudicators' 
          decision is final.
  \end{itemize}
\end{minipage}

Please make sure you send in your completed forms by January 1st next year, or the penalty clause 2(a) will apply. Incomplete forms will be returned to you unprocessed. Forms must be accompanied by the correct fee. There is no appeal. The adjudicators' decision is final.

Within a minipage you can use virtually everything that occurs in normal text (e.g. lists, paragraphs, tabulations, etc.) with the exception of floats like tables and figures. The minipage environment has an argument just like \parbox does, and it means the same: the width you want the text set to.

Note that in both minipages and \parboxes, the paragraph indentation (\parindent) is reset to zero. If you need to change it, set it inside the minipage or \parbox using the \setlength command (see section 3.6).

There are two other ways of typesetting text to widths other than the normal text width: you can use a one-row, one-cell tabular environment with the p column type specification, or you can use the \vbox command, which is Plain TEX, and outside the scope of this document.

6.7.2 Framed boxes

To put a frame round , use the \fbox command: \fbox{some text}. This works for a few words in mid-line, but the framed box and its contents won't break over the end of a line. To typeset multiline text in a box, put it in a \parbox, or use a minipage or tabular environment as described above, and enclose the whole thing in a \fbox.

\fbox{\begin{minipage}{3in}
This multiline text is more flexible than a tabular setting:
\begin{itemize}
  \item it can contain any type of normal LATEX typesetting;
  \item it can be any specified width;
  \item it can even have its own footnotes\footnote{Like this}.
\end{itemize}
\end{minipage}}

This multiline text is more flexible than a tabular setting:

• it can contain any type of normal LATEX typesetting;

• it can be any specified width;

• it can even have its own footnotes.⁷

The spacing between text and box is controlled by the value of \fboxsep, and the thickness of the line by \fboxrule. The following values were used above:

\setlength{\fboxsep}{1ex}
\setlength{\fboxrule}{1pt}

As we saw before, setting justified text in narrow measures will produce poor spacing: either use the \raggedright command, or change the font size, or add explicit extra hyphenation points.

Note the \begin{tabular} and \begin{minipage} commands still need the width specifying: in the case of the \begin{tabular} by the use of the p column type with its width specification, and in the case of \begin{minipage} by the second argument.

\fbox{\begin{tabular}{p{1.5in}}
Multiline text in a box typeset using \textsf{tabular}
\end{tabular}}

Multiline text in a box typeset using tabular

7. Like this.

6.7.3 Sidebars and panels

The fancybox package lets you extend the principle of \fbox with commands to surround text in square, oval (round-cornered), and drop-shadow boxes (e.g. \ovalbox, \shadowbox, etc.: see the documentation for details).

You can create panels of any size with these borders by using the minipage environment to typeset the text inside a special Sbox environment which fancybox defines. The minipage formats the text but the Sbox ‘captures’ it, allowing you to delay putting the frame around until it is complete.

The printed version of this document uses this extensively and there is a worked example shown in section 9.5.