67

It is not nice to have a page break right after the colon and have the list start on a new page: 

And here, finally, is the list of mission-critical items:
\begin{itemize}
...
\end{itemize}

How can I prevent that?

lockstep
  • 250,273
Frank
  • 7,175

6 Answers6

38
\makeatletter 
\newcommand\mynobreakpar{\par\nobreak\@afterheading} 
\makeatother
.....
text\mynobreakpar
\begin{itemize}
....
Ulrike Fischer
  • 327,261
  • 9
    It works but somehow swallows the vertical space before itemize. – user87690 Jul 13 '14 at 12:05
  • @user87690 to avoid that add \vspace{\baselineskip}, like this: \newcommand\mynobreakpar{\vspace{\baselineskip}\par\nobreak\@afterheading} – anamar Sep 06 '21 at 22:54
32

LaTeX puts \beginparpenalty at the begin of a list. The standard classes set \@beginparpenalty to -\@lowpenalty (-51), i.e., they somewhat encourage page breaks before lists. If you want to avoid page breaks before lists at all costs, set \@beginparpenalty to 10000 in the preamble of your document.

\documentclass{article}

\makeatletter
\@beginparpenalty=10000
\makeatother

\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}

\lipsum[1-5]

\begin{itemize}
\item \lipsum*[6]
\end{itemize}

\end{document}
lockstep
  • 250,273
22

enumitem's beginpenalty parameter is still missing here, and is specially convenient (adapting lockstep's MWE):

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}

\lipsum[1-5]

\begin{itemize}[beginpenalty=10000]
\item \lipsum*[6]
\end{itemize}

\end{document}
gusbrs
  • 13,740
  • 1
    Top anwer, thanks so much! :) – eudoxos Oct 06 '19 at 09:35
  • 1
    enumitem package has also midpenalty and endpenalty parameters, which can be useful to handle widowed/orphaned list items: http://www.texnia.com/archive/enumitem.pdf#subsection.3.5 – mmj Mar 10 '20 at 09:53
13

Another solution, similar to Corbie's one, is use of samepage environment in way below. It's enough to use it on first item in list (or a few first ones), so you can use it without suppressing page-break either in preceding paragraph and in whole list. Also, minipage environment is probably overkill comparing to samepage and you need not specify line width, but it's matter of taste, you can use it too.

And here, finally, is the list of mission-critical items:
\begin{itemize}
\begin{samepage} % first item is tied to end of preceding paragraph
    \item first item...
\end{samepage}
    ... % second and following items
\end{itemize}
Community
  • 1
Velda
  • 235
6

The \mynobreakpar solution does met work properly for user87690 (see comment on the \mynobreakpar solution), because in his scope, the paragraph separator is zero, but the list top separator is not. So it seems better to use the macro \nolisttopbreak below instead.

\makeatletter
\newcommand{\nolisttopbreak}{\vspace{\topsep}\nobreak\@afterheading}
\makeatother
.....
text\nolisttopbreak
\begin{itemize}
....

As you can see, then is no \par, so the paragraph separator is not used.

brac37
  • 133
  • 1
    While this might answer the question, it's sometimes better to provide a full example instead of a fragment –  Nov 06 '14 at 16:54
  • I have copied the corresponding parts of the original solution, so that this solution can live on its own. – brac37 Nov 06 '14 at 17:10
  • 2
    This does not seem to work here, but Ulrike’s variant does. – Joachim Breitner Mar 03 '15 at 09:12
  • @Joachim Breitner. I agree both solutions have a different effect. But your claim is opposite to the reason of adding my solution: the experience that the other (mine) solution is the working one. It might be the context that makes the difference. – brac37 Jul 07 '15 at 23:01
4

I prefer moving the introduction to a minipage:

\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
  And here, finally, is the list of mission-critical items:
  \begin{itemize}
  ...
  \end{itemize}
\end{minipage}

Note that this prevents page breaks inside the list too.

Corbie
  • 256