# Changes

,  19:14, 4 September 2005
Added improved explanation (after looking this up in the LaTeX manual), example.
=== LaTeX ===

LaTeX provides a <tt>description</tt> environment, which works just like an itemized or enumerated list except that the item labels are specified by an (optional) argument to the <tt>\item</tt> command, rather than being automatically generated. This is useful for making lists of definitions and other sorts of descriptions that are headed by a keyword.

<texcode>
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{description}
\item[Short ] This is a shorter item label] bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla, and some text that talks about it. bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla blaThe text is wrapped into a paragraph, with successive lines indented.\item[Very long Rather longer label] bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla blaThis is a longer item label. As you can see, the bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla blatext is not started a specified distance in -- unlike with other lists -- butis spaced a fixed distance from the end of the label.
\end{description}
\end{document}