Thanks Nicolas, What version of org-mode are you using? I recently updated to 9.3.6 and am fairly certain this issue is new. I have not compared latex output from previous org-mode versions however description labels in previous org mode versions were treated correctly by xelatex(e.g bold font in a koma script article class). This stopped working after my upgrade which prompted me to look at the latex output. The format you get creates a properly formatted pdf. \begin{description} \item[{label}] information \end{description} Regards, Matthew On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 3:42 AM Nicolas Goaziou wrote: > Hello, > > Matthew Henderson writes: > > > The following list: > > > > - label :: information > > > > when exported to latex generates: > > > > \begin{description} > > \item{label} information > > \end{description} > > FWIW, here I get > > \begin{description} > \item[{label}] information > \end{description} > > Regards, > -- > Nicolas Goaziou >