In the LyX word processor, which I recommend highly for technical writing, the on-screen layout of lists is very spread out. You can fix that easily by editing your stdlists.inc file, which you’ll find in /usr/share/lyx/layouts/stdlists.inc on linux, or in c:\Program Files\Lyx\Resources\layouts\stdlists.inc in Windows.
Just change ItemSep, TopSep, BottomSep, and ParSep to 0.0, and the bulleted lists become nice and compact.
Format 4
Style Itemize
Margin Static
LatexType Item_Environment
LatexName itemize
NextNoIndent 1
LeftMargin MMN
LabelSep xx
ItemSep 0.0
TopSep 0.0
BottomSep 0.0
ParSep 0.0
Align Block
AlignPossible Block, Left
LabelType Itemize
LabelString "*"
End
EDIT 9/2/2008:
It’s better to edit this in your preferences directory. Copy the stdlists.inc file to your Lyx preferences directory (in Linux: ~/.lyx/layouts) and edit it there.