Changing style of latex description lists

Solution 1:

If you \usepackage{enumitem} you may get what you like:

\begin{description}[style=multiline,leftmargin=3cm,font=\normalfont]
\item[Name:]  Halpo
\item[Email Address:] [email protected]
\item[Address:]  1234 Ivy Ln \\ Springfield, USA
\end{description}

Results in:

Check here for full package documentation.

Solution 2:

The formatting of description labels is controlled by the command \descriptionlabel. Here's an example of changing to italics, no bold:

\renewcommand{\descriptionlabel}[1]{\hspace{\labelsep}\textit{#1}}

To change the formatting of the label to something else, change the \textit{#1} part above.

EDIT 2017-01-24: My original example used \emph, but as @ebo pointed out, it is better to use \textit for this situation because this is a case of changing the text style, not emphasizing text.

Solution 3:

Geoff - you can set these parameters for all lists (so that it's automatic) using this code:

\setlist[description]{style=multiline,leftmargin=3cm}

Apologies, I don't have enough rep to reply to your comment, hence the separate answer.

Solution 4:

For a hack, do \item[\rm Name:].