Ah, this makes sense. Unfortunately, an additional constraint I failed to
mention in the first email is that it'd be nice if the solution worked for
numbered lists as well. That solution unfortunately breaks on numbered
lists :(

Is there perhaps another way to accomplish this?

P.S. I just noticed the typo in "position" in the subject of this
thread...apols, how very embarrassing of me.

On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 6:31 PM, John Kitchin <johnrkitchin@gmail.com>
wrote:

> This is very un-orgish but it seems to do it. (forward-word) goes to the
> end the next recognized word, (backward-word) to the beginning of the
> word you are now at the end of, and (backward-char) to get to a
> space. You just need org to get you on the list ;)
>
> It seems to work on these.
>
> - foo :: bar    (goto-char (org-element-property :contents-begin
> (org-element-at-point)))
> -     baz :: goo
> - 1 egg
> - 0.5 cups
> - :punc
>
> #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
> (defun gg ()
>  (interactive)
>  (beginning-of-line)
>  (forward-word)
>  (backward-word)
>  (while (not (looking-at " "))
>    (backward-char)))
> #+END_SRC
>
>
> Calvin Young writes:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > If my cursor is in a description list item, what's the recommended way of
> > getting the point at the beginning of the description list text (i.e.,
> > after the bullet character)? To illustrate, given the following
> description
> > list item, I'd like to get the point represented by the pipe character
> "|":
> >
> > - |foo :: bar
> >
> > If I use something like `(org-element-property :contents-begin
> > (org-element-at-point))`, that gives me the point at the beginning of the
> > description, not the list item:
> >
> > - foo :: |bar
> >
> > How do I need to massage this to give me the beginning of the whole list
> > item? Is there a recommended solution that'd work for both description
> > lists *and* plain lists?
> >
> > Thanks everyone :)
> >
> > Calvin
>
> --
> Professor John Kitchin
> Doherty Hall A207F
> Department of Chemical Engineering
> Carnegie Mellon University
> Pittsburgh, PA 15213
> 412-268-7803
> @johnkitchin
> http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu
>