Hanging indents can be tricky-but they seem particularly tricky for students using Open Office (instead of Microsoft Word).
To create a bibliographic note with a hanging indent, start by putting your heading at the top of the page-either Bibliography or Works Cited-centered at the top of the page. You just want to set that format in place before you start adjusting spacing for the notes.
Next, type in the bibliographic note. To create the proper "hanging indent" format which requires that the first line remain flush left and the subsequent line of your note indented, you should highlight the note.
After the note is highlighted, go to:
-> Format
-> Paragraph
Next you adjust the adjust the numbers in "Before Text" and "First Line" as you see in the image above.
- Before text value should be (somewhere around) positive 0.37.
- First line value should be (somewhere around) negative 0.37.
The paragraph formatting will remain as set, so you can continue to type bibliographic notes in the hanging indent style. If the indent size looks too big or too small, simply adjust the values a bit.
Once you've created a bibliography, you can save the document as a template. That way, you can go back and make more bibliographies with the formatting set.
