Hanging Indent

In Microsoft Word

Do you know how to create a hanging indent? Do you know what a hanging indent is?

A hanging indent is the strange format of a bibliography note that is required in most writing styles. The first line of each note is flush to the left, but the subsequent lines of the individual notes are indented.

So why do I bring it up? You're probably touching up a final paper about now, and there is a common mistake you can avoid by knowing how to form a hanging indent properly.

It is very important that you create the indented lines in the citation in the proper way (instead of hitting the tab or space bar). If you don't, you can mess up the entire spacing of your bibliography and spend hours trying to get it to look right on the page.

To do it right, you need to write each citation without inserting any hard returns (hitting the enter button) or any tabs. Then, highlight the entire note (a single one or the entire page of notes) for editing purposes and go to FORMAT and PARAGRAPH. Somewhere in the menu (normally under SPECIAL), find the term HANGING and select it. The correct spacing will appear automatically.