[Tex/LaTex] “itemize” with customized bullets

Question

\begin{itemize}

\item blah blah blah blah

\end{itemize}

As far as I know the main difference between the code above and just writing something like

$\bullet$ blah blah blah blah

is that everything within the "item" gets indented to a point to the right of the bullet.

I'd like to do that with customized bullets instead of just bullets, one of which would look like {\bf Q:} and another like {\bf A:}.

That way when typing a multi-line paragraph after {\bf Q:} or {\bf A:}, the subsequent lines would be vertically aligned with the first one.

How can that be done?

Answer 1

You can use the enumitem package to define a customized list; in the following example, the mylist environment is such that \item will produce as label Q: bold-faced; the newcommand \itema can be used to produce the label A: bold-faced:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\newlist{mylist}{itemize}{1}
\setlist[mylist]{label=\textbf{Q:}}
\newcommand\itema{\item[\textbf{A:}]}

\begin{document}

\begin{mylist}
\item \lipsum[4]\lipsum[4]
\itema \lipsum[4]\lipsum[4]
\end{mylist}

\end{document}

Another option, not requiring packages, is to define two commands using the optional argument for \item to produce the desired labels:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\newcommand\itema{\item[\textbf{A:}]}
\newcommand\itemq{\item[\textbf{Q:}]}

\begin{document}

\begin{itemize}
\itemq \lipsum[4]\lipsum[4]
\itema \lipsum[4]\lipsum[4]
\end{itemize}

\end{document}