Hcfyk

Consider this small document:

documentclass{article}



usepackage{blindtext}



begin{document}



blindtext



blindtext



begin{enumerate}

item%

blindtext



blindtext

end{enumerate}



end{document}

This has two paragraphs outside a list environment, and two paragraphs inside a list environment. I've noticed in this situation that paragraphs outside lists have their first line indented, whereas paragraphs inside lists do not have any indent:

Why does this occur? Can I restore the indentation inside a list?

EDIT: I notice that in lists, by default paragraphs are separated by blank lines. Preferably a solution should also get rid of that. (For context, I'm writing up a solution to an assignment, and nearly every paragraph is inside an enumerate or similar.)

item properties can be formatted with enumitem. Then you can use listparindent for enumerate environment:

documentclass{article}



usepackage{blindtext}

usepackage{enumitem}

setlist[enumerate]{parsep=0pt}



begin{document}



blindtext



blindtext



    begin{enumerate}[listparindent=1.5em]



        item

        blindtext



        blindtext



    end{enumerate}



end{document}

EDIT: Thanks to @David, you can also set parsep to 0 if you want to get rid of that space.

The reason for this behaviour is that inside enumerate the length parindent is set to zero. So you can not use a simple indent as usual in normal text to get the space of parindent set.

You can simulate the ususal behaviour in normal text with the following code (See <===== for important code):

documentclass{article}



usepackage{blindtext}

usepackage{enumitem} % <===============================================

newlength{enumerateparindent} % <=====================================



begin{document}



setlength{enumerateparindent}{parindent} % <=========================

blindtext



blindtext



begin{enumerate}

setlength{parindent}{enumerateparindent} % <=========================

%showparindent 

%value{parindent}

item%

blindtext



blindtext

end{enumerate}



Version 2:

begin{enumerate}[listparindent=enumerateparindent] % <================

item%

blindtext



blindtext

end{enumerate}



end{document}

and the wished result:

Please see that setlength{parindent}{enumerateparindent} does only work in that enumerate list you placed the command inside ...

If you are already using package enumitem -- as mentioned in an comment -- you can use it to use the same indent defined in parindent with version 2 in my mwe.

The you get the resulting version 2: