[Tex/LaTex] description environment with italic, non bold labels, bullets and normal font in the description

descriptionenumitemformattingitemizelists

I think I am lost in something very easy with the enumitem package.

I would like a description environment where the label is in italics and the description in normal text.

I tried this

\documentclass[english,12pt,a4paper,pdftex]{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\begin{document}

\setlist{before=\normalfont,font=\itshape} 

\begin{description}
\item [point-referenced data] this should be in normal font
\item [areal data]
\item [point pattern data]
\end{description}

\end{document}

problem is for some reasons the label comes out in bold italic and I do not why.
Is it lso possible to add bullets to it?

Summarizing I would like to have a description environment with italic, non bold labels, bullets and normal font in the description.

Before you ask I checked this post and numerous others, but I do not understand how to make all the options work together.

Best Answer

You don't need the before key; just revert to \normalfont for the label and apply \itshape; by using [description] as optional argument to \setlist only this environment will be affected.

For the bullet, you can easily do it by slightly abusing the font key:

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\begin{document}

\setlist[description]{font=\normalfont\itshape\textbullet\space}

\begin{description}
\item [point-referenced data] this should be in normal font
\item [areal data]
\item [point pattern data]
\end{description}

\end{document}

Don't use the pdftex option. It just limits portability and is useless as the packages using it are able to infer it automatically.

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