The enumitem package

A very common question is how to change the numbering scheme for the enumerate environment (or the bulleting scheme of itemize). There are a few packages to do this; my personal choice is enumitem. Here is a short example:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{enumitem}

\begin{document}

\begin{enumerate}
\item One.
\item Two.
\item Three.
\end{enumerate}

\begin{enumerate}[noitemsep]
\item One.
\item Two.
\item Three.
\end{enumerate}

\begin{enumerate}[noitemsep,label=(\alph*)]
\item One.
\item Two.
\item Three.
\end{enumerate}

\end{document}

(similar options are provided for the itemize environment).

Notice that you can put more than one option simultaneously (using a comma to separate options), and that some options have the so-called “key=value” syntax (for example, you could say

\begin[label=\Alph:]{enumerate}

to get another numbering scheme). One thing which is good to remember is that a closing bracket (”]”) in the options will fool LaTeX—it means “options end here”. If you want to get a numbering scheme [1], [2] etc., you can write instead

\begin{enumerate}[label={[\arabic*]}]

(try it!); if you hide the closing bracket in curly braces, LaTeX won’t “see” it.

(You might be tempted to use that idea for bibliographies, but it’s better to use a specialized package—like amsrefs—for that purpose.)

Needless to say, the whole range of available possibilities is described in the enumitem package documentation.