Create a hanging indent in Word Online. Word Online More. A paragraph has hanging indentation when the second line and any lines that follow are all indented further than the first line. Hanging indentation is often used for formatting bibliographies, and it. Jan 18, 2019 - The first line of a paragraph with a hanging indent is flush-left, at the left. Content in a list and call attention to the first word of each paragraph.
Okay, The Guru has a confession to make: I used to be afraid of. This, of course, is silly.
Of all the things in the world there are to be afraid of —, heights, thermonuclear war, global economic meltdowns — hanging indents are pretty innocuous. But I did, until fairly recently, go through a period where I avoided doing hanging indents because I kept getting confused by them. (More on that later.) Some of you are asking, “What is a hanging indent?” It’s a style of paragraph indentation that has the first line flush with the left margin but indents all of the subsequent lines in the paragraph, like so: (If you had to write term papers in APA Style in college, you recognize the format.) Now you’re asking, “So what’s so scary about a hanging indent?” and “Why should I care about ’em?” Let me explain.
Navigate This Article. Hanging indents: Not just for term papers Looking at the above illustration, you might say, “Well, my term paper writing days are over. What possible use could hanging indents have in a law office?” (You sure are talkative this morning.) Consider these: Hadn’t considered those, had you? I became a convert when I discovered that my Re: lines in correspondence were a whole lot easier to format when I used hanging indents. Let’s look a little more closely at one (with Show/Hide turned on). So, I have the “Re:”, then a tab, then the remainder of the “paragraph” (in a manner of speaking) that wraps 1/2 inch short of the left margin so it’s nice and lined-up with the text after the tab on the first line. How to set this up There are two methods for starting a hanging indent: 1.
Use CTRL-T for default hanging indent settings The quickest, easiest way to do a hanging indent (assuming you’re okay with the default settings) is to hit on your keyboard. What that will do is create a hanging indent that leaves the first line of the “paragraph” flush with the left margin and a half-inch (in the U.S.) indent for all subsequent lines. In other words, it’ll be just like what you see illustrated above. Use custom settings in the Paragraph dialog box If the default settings above don’t quite do the trick (say, you need to indent the entire paragraph 1″ so that the first line is pushed to the right and the rest of the lines indented from there), you’ll need to go to the Paragraph dialog box. To get there, click the tiny launcher arrow at the bottom right of the Paragraph section of the Home tab in Word: The dialog box looks like this: The hanging indent settings area is circled in red.
This is where you tell Word how much the second and subsequent lines are indented. If you want the first line indented, or if you want the text to be pushed in somewhat from the right, use the Indentation settings circled in blue above. If you need to reset the tabs (as I did when I did the “Witness/Attorney” example shown in the second illustration), just click the Tabs button at the bottom. ( for tutorials on how to set tabs.) You can always check your progress in the Preview window just above the OK button. Once you’re satisfied with it, click OK to finish.
What can go wrong (and how to fix it) Remember when I mentioned that I avoided hanging indents because I kept getting confused by them? Sometimes, I’ve found that the settings that I thought would yield a particular result didn’t, and it just got worse the more I tried to “fix” them. Here’s a tip: What I do is simply.
There’s a shortcut key (CTRL-Q) that resets all paragraph settings instantly. While it will also reset other things like line spacing, it’s a handy shortcut key to have around when you just want to start from scratch. Where could you use hanging indents? Let me know in the comments below!
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Lists The hanging indent functionality hides in a couple of places you wouldn’t normally think to look for it–a little arrow in a corner of a dialog box, and in a menu that comes up when you right-click. That’s the secret of how to make a hanging indent in Word. Let’s get the easy one out of the way first. Microsoft Word makes lists rather easy, creating the hanging indent for you. In any version of Word you’re likely to be using, it can even do it automatically for you. Just start typing, starting with a number and a period, and Word will format it for you and set you up with your next number.
When you’re finished with the list, just hit enter twice, and Word will remove the blank number and go back to formatting text as normal. For a bulleted list, precede the first item on your list with an asterisk character and a space, like this:. item 1 Word will convert it to a bullet for you and create the next one for you.
When you’re done with your list, hit the enter key twice. Word will remove the blank bullet and return to normal formatting.
Niceties like this set modern word processing apart from the old days. If you prefer, Word also has icons on the home tab in its ribbon to create lists for you. Simply click the icon that looks like a numbered list or bulleted list, depending on which type you want.
If you highlight some text before you click the icon, it will convert the highlighted text to a list. Adjusting list indents If you need to adjust how much it indents the list, click one of the numbers or bullets to highlight them, then right-click one of them and select Adjust list indents. This brings up a dialog box where you can adjust your alignments precisely. Make a hanging indent in Word manually If you need a hanging indent that isn’t part of a list, you’ll have to make a hanging indent manually. That isn’t hard to do, and there are three ways to do it.
This lets you make paragraphs that look like this, useful for citations, bibliographies, and scripts. Farquhar, David L. Optimizing Windows for Games, Graphics and Multimedia. Cambridge: O'Reilly and Associates, 1999. How to make a hanging indent in Word with the context menu The easiest but perhaps least intuitive method to make a hanging indent involves your mouse and Word’s context menu. You can start by simply typing your text normally. Then highlight the paragraph, right click, and select Paragraph.
In the section marked Indentation, click the Special drop down list to select Hanging. Select the value you want from the dropdown. The most common value is.5 inches. How to make a hanging indent in Word using the ruler The most common way to manually make a hanging indent in Word, I think, is to use the ruler. Click the View tab on the ribbon, then check the box to enable the ruler if it’s not already showing. There are two tabs on the left side of the ruler. Normally we drag the marker on the top over to the right to make Word indent the first line of the paragraph.
If you drag the lower marker to the right, Word indents the subsequent lines of the paragraph instead. How to make a hanging indent in Word with the dialog box Pro tip: Any time you can’t find something in Microsoft Office, look for those arrows in the lower right hand corner of sections of the ribbon. That’s usually where what you’re looking for is hiding. The other way to manually make a hanging indent in Word is to pull up the paragraph dialog box via the ribbon. On most versions of Word, this hides on the Home tab in the paragraphs section. Click the little arrow in the lower right hand corner of the paragraphs section to open the Paragraph dialog box.
Click on the Indents and Spacing tab. In the section marked Indentation, click the Special drop-down list, select Hanging and choose the value you want. The standard is.5 inches.
Which method should you use? The mouse is probably the fastest method, but use whichever one you can remember. When I first learned Word in the early 1990s, the ruler was the fastest way to do it so I tend to do it that way out of habit.
Use whichever method works for you. Solving other problems in Word A lot of common problems in Word have relatively easy solutions. Here are some examples:.