#enumerate
I am trying to use square brackets at the very beginning of an item in an enumerate statement (but not as the item label itself). So, I want something like:
\item [Short term] blah blah
To show up as:
1. [Short term] blah blah
Instead it shows up as:
Short term blah blah
without any indenting.
What is going wrong and how can I fix this?
Using some ideas from Order items in enumerate environment automatically, the following MWE provides a myenumerate environment where you pass an optional argument as a number, which then excludes that specific item from the list.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{environ}% http://ctan.org/pkg/environ
\makeatletter
\newcounter{listcount}
\let\olditem\item% Store regular \item macro
\NewEnviron{myenumerate}[1][]{%
\if\relax\detokenize{#1}\relax% A normal list (https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/53068/5764)
\else% A reordered list
\g@addto@macro{\BODY}{\item\relax\item}% Used to delimit the items; last item identified by \item\relax\item
\setcounter{listcount}{0}% Restart at the beginning of myenumerate
\def\item##1\item{% Redefine \item to capture contents
\def\optarg{##1}%
\expandafter\ifx\optarg\relax\else% Last item not reached
\stepcounter{listcount}% Next item being processed
\ifnum\value{listcount}=#1\stepcounter{enumi}\else% Don't print this item, just step enumi
\olditem ##1% Print regular item
\fi
\expandafter\item% Recursively continue processing items
\fi
}%
\fi
\enumerate\BODY\endenumerate% Process environment
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\begin{myenumerate}
\item This is the first item.
\item This is the second item.
\item This is the third item.
\end{myenumerate}
\begin{myenumerate}[2]
\item This is the first item.
\item This is the second item.
\item This is the third item.
\end{myenumerate}
\end{document}
It could be generalized to process a list of items to be discarded. With a slight modification and the introduction of etoolbox's list processing, the following processes a sequence of numbers at every \item and either sets the item or not.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{environ,etoolbox}% http://ctan.org/pkg/{environ,etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\newif\ifprintitem% Condition to print item or not
\newcounter{listcount}
\let\olditem\item% Store regular \item macro
\NewEnviron{myenumerate}[1][]{%
\if\relax\detokenize{#1}\relax% A normal list
\else% A reordered list
\g@addto@macro{\BODY}{\item\relax\item}% Used to delimit the items; last item identified by \item\relax\item
\setcounter{listcount}{0}% Restart at the beginning of myenumerate
\def\item##1\item{% Redefine \item to capture contents
\def\optarg{##1}%\show\optarg%
\expandafter\ifx\optarg\relax\else% Last item not reached
\stepcounter{listcount}% Next item being processed
\printitemtrue% Always print item
\renewcommand*{\do}[1]{\ifnum\value{listcount}=####1 \printitemfalse\fi}%
\expandafter\docsvlist\expandafter{#1}% Process list of possible exclusions
\ifprintitem
\olditem ##1% Print regular item
\else\stepcounter{enumi}% Don't print this item, just step enumi
\fi
\expandafter\item% Recursively continue processing items
\fi
}%
\fi
\enumerate\BODY\endenumerate% Process environment
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\begin{myenumerate}
\item This is the first item.
\item This is the second item.
\item This is the third item.
\item This is the fourth item.
\item This is the fifth item.
\item This is the sixth item.
\item This is the seventh item.
\item This is the eighth item.
\end{myenumerate}
\begin{myenumerate}[2,3,8]
\item This is the first item.
\item This is the second item.
\item This is the third item.
\item This is the fourth item.
\item This is the fifth item.
\item This is the sixth item.
\item This is the seventh item.
\item This is the eighth item.
\end{myenumerate}
\end{document}
\documentclass{beamer}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\begin{enumerate}
\item First item
{
\setbeamercolor{enumerate item}{fg=green}
\color{green}
\item Second item
}
\item Last item
\end{enumerate}
\end{frame}
\end{document}
Or much easier using the alert feature of beamer:
\documentclass{beamer}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\begin{enumerate}
\item First item
\item<alert@+-> Second item
\item Last item
\end{enumerate}
\end{frame}
\end{document}
Best Answer
Your problem is that latex is interpreting your square brackets as an argument to
\item(even though there is a space in between) and using the text inside as the item label instead of preceding your other text with the square brackets.You can fix this by adding curly braces around the square brackets:
\item {[Short term]} blah blahwhich will produce:
1. [Short term] blah blahDon't put a tilde (~) between the item and the brackets, because this would add an extra space in the formatted text.
\item~[Short term] blah blahwill produce