4.42 adjusting text, parskip, parindent

From http://www.andy-roberts.net/writing/latex/tables

 
 There are also things known as command lengths, which are not 
 fixed values as they depend on the configuration of the current 
 document class and/or preamble. Useful ones include: 
 
    * \parindent - the size of the paragraph indent 
    * \baselineskip - vertical distance between lines. 
    * \parskip - the extra space between paragraphs. 
    * \textwidth - the width of a line of text in the local 
                   environment (e.g., the 
                   lines are commonly narrower in the abstract 
                   than in the normal text). 
    * \textheight - the height of the text on the page.
 

try this sometime

% 
% this makes list spacing much better. 
% 
\newenvironment{my_enumerate}{ 
\begin{enumerate} 
  \setlength{\itemsep}{1pt} 
  \setlength{\parskip}{0pt} 
  \setlength{\parsep}{0pt}}{\end{enumerate} 
}
 

What I do is insert this code somewhere at the top of my LaTeX document, before I need to create any enumerations. Then, later in the document, when I do want to create an enumeration, instead of using the enumerate tag, I use the my_enumerate