Do you want to understand how to make attractive and stylized lists in your manuscript or other LibreOffice document? Here we walk through the list styles and how to use them.

In this article, we will look at how to style lists in LibreWriter and then how to apply those styles into paragraph styles to fine-tune your bullet points.

Before going through this tutorial, you should have LibreOffice installed on your computer and be reasonably comfortable with the UI and where to access the styles menu.

List Styles

Navigate to the List Styles editor on the sidebar and either edit a pre-existing list style or create a new one by right clicking any of the existing lists. The existing styles include both bullet points and numbered lists.

The Organizer tab includes the Name, which is self-explanatory. The Inherit From will be available if you have created a new list based on an existing style. Anything in the existing style is the default, and anything else will override the parent style. The Category section indicates where it will be shown on the menu selection at the bottom of the styles list box.

The next three tabs, Bullets, Numbering Style, Outline, and Image determine the type of list bullet point. You can only select a single option between all four tabs. The Image tab allows you to upload your own image.

Position allows you to set the alignments. Each level is set independently.

• Aligned At is the spacing of the bullet.
• Number Alignment positions the bullet point to the right, left, or center of the ruler mark selected above.
• Numbering Followed By determines what comes right after the bullet:
  • space (just a small gap between the bullet and the text)
  • nothing (the text is right against the bullet)
  • Tab stop (places the start of the text at the next aligned tab stop)
• Tab stop at (only available on the Tab Stop section) - next tab spacing
• Indent At is where any wrap around text goes.
• The default button at the bottom resets the level to the system default.

Customize allows you select different bullet styles for each level and allows bullet and numbering on the same list.

• Number is the style for the bullet
• Character Style - This is defined by the Character Styles tab
• Start At defines where the numbering starts for numbered lists.
• Before and After show custom text before and after the bullet point

Paragraph Styles

Once the list styles are defined, you can set the list to apply to a Paragraph Style by modifying the style and go to the Outline & Numbering tab, and under Numbering Style, select your List Style from the dropdown menu.

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