How to interrupt/resume a list in LaTeX?

Question

I want to produce output something like this:

1. List item

2. Another list item

Paragraph of comments on list items 1 and 2.

3. Further item

4. Final item

I'm sure I've seen a nice way to interrupt and resume lists in this way (without explicitly setting some counter), but I can't reproduce it.

Answer 1

You can use newcounter and usecounter to get around this -- here's an example.

Answer 2

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\begin{enumerate}
\item first;

\item second;
\end{enumerate}

This is a paragraph.


\begin{enumerate}
  \setcounter{enumi}{2}
\item third;

\item and so on...
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}

edit: as pointed out by Dervin Thunk, I hardcoded 2 here.

so, here's a solution that seems to work:

\documentclass{article}

\newcounter{tempcounter}

\begin{document}

\begin{enumerate}
\item first;

\item second;
  \setcounter{tempcounter}{\value{enumi}}
\end{enumerate}

This is a paragraph.


\begin{enumerate}
  \setcounter{enumi}{\value{tempcounter}}
\item third;

\item and so on...
\end{enumerate}
\end{document}

Answer 3

You use a special paralist package, which you declare in the document heading (under your documentclass declaration): \usepackage{paralist}. Then, within your paragraph, you enclose your inline list in \begin{inparaenum}...\end{inparaenum} source: http://happymutant.com/latex/

Answer 4

The TeX FAQ lists several ways of doing this. Read here for full details.

I've successfully used the mdwlist package (which is part of mdwtools) in my own documents. For example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{mdwlist}

\begin{document}

\begin{enumerate}
\item List item
\item Another list item
\suspend{enumerate}

Paragraph of comments on list items 1 and 2.

\resume{enumerate}
\item Further item
\item Final item
\end{enumerate}

\end{document}

Thanks to Dervin Thunk for providing the FAQ link.

Answer 5

I like enumitem for this sort of thing:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\begin{document}

\begin{enumerate}
  \item List item
  \item Another list item
\end{enumerate}

Paragraph of comments on list items 1 and 2.

\begin{enumerate}[resume]
  \item Further item
  \item Final item
\end{enumerate}

\end{document}