General ⇒ Modifying default behavior of itemized lists

[tripwire45]

Guess I'm on a roll today.

I need to create nested itemized lists in a document. Problem is, I want *all* of the items to appear as bulleted or "bullet-like". The default behavior is to display the top-level items as bullets but the second-level items as dashes. The dashes look "funky" to me and I'd rather have something a tad more conventional. Even if the second-level item bullets appear clear instead of solid or even a different shape such as square or diamond would be ok.

I know there is a way to modify the default...probably through the use of a "label" such as \item[label]. but Googling doesn't produce the specific method. I'd appreciate any of your ideas on the matter. Thanks.

-Trip

[gmedina]

Take a look at the enumitem package.

[Juanjo]

An approach that does not require loading packages reads as follows.
The characters appearing in the labels of the itemize environment are stored in the following commands: \labelitemi, \labelitemii, \labelitemiii and \labelitemiv, depending of the nesting level. If, for example, you want diamonds at the second level, add somewhere the code:

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\renewcommand{\labelitemii}{$\diamond$}

If you put this in the preamble, the redefinition will affect all itemized lists (at level 2) in the document. If you only want to change the behaviour of a specific list, write that inside the environment, right after \begin{itemize}.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Trip,

I just want to mention, if you want to use Juanjo's approach, the command for the bullet used at first level is \textbullet, if you want to use the same at deeper levels. For \textbullet no math mode is needed.

Stefan

[tripwire45]

Actually, using:

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\renewcommand{\labelitemii}{$\circ$}

did the trick. Thanks.