How to Do a Hanging Indent in Microsoft Word

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Updated November 22, 2019

You're probably familiar with the practice of indenting the first line of a paragraph within text. It's a common style for fiction and academic papers. The opposite, outdenting, is common with bibliographical references and other citations. It's also the default setting for bulleted or numbered lists. In this article, we describe how to create a hanging indent correctly.

This article applies to Word 2019, Word 2016, Word 2013, and Word for Office 365.

Set Up a Hanging Indent

Here are the basic steps for setting up a hanging indent.

Open your document. Select the paragraph you want to have the hanging indent. On the ribbon, select Home.
In the Paragraph group, select the dialog box launcher.
In the Paragraph dialog box, select the Indents and Spacing tab.
In the Indentation section, select the Special dropdown menu and choose Hanging.
Under By, enter a positive value using quarter-inch increments.
The Preview section at the bottom of the dialog box shows how your text will look.
Select OK.
The paragraph you selected now has a hanging indent.

If you place your cursor at the end of the paragraph and press Enter on your keyboard, the new paragraph has a hanging indent as well.
Alternatively, you can set a hanging indent using the ruler just under the ribbon. If you don't see it, on the ribbon select View.
In the Show group, select Ruler.
Select the paragraph you want to have the hanging indent. Move the bottom (up-arrow) slider on the ruler to shift the text in the second row and below.

Use a Hanging Indent for References, Works Cited, or Bibliography List

The correct formatting for references, works cited, and bibliographies involves the use of a hanging indent. Here's how to create it.

Open your list. Highlight one or more entries that you would like to have a hanging indent.
Right-click. From the menu, select Paragraph.
In the Paragraph dialog box, in the Indentation section, select the Special dropdown menu and select Hanging.
Under By, select a positive number in quarter-inch increments.
Select OK.
The entries you selected reflect the hanging indentation.

Apply Hanging Indent to a Style

A style is a collection of formatting properties, such as bold, italics, double spacing, color, size, etc. You can add a hanging indent to a style, which you can later use instead of going through the process above each time you want to create a hanging indent. Here's how to do it:

Open your document. On the ribbon, select Home.
In the Styles group, right-click the Normal style.
From the menu, choose Modify.
In the Modify Style dialog box, in the bottom-left corner, select the Format dropdown menu and choose Paragraph.
In the Paragraph dialog box, choose Hanging under the Special menu and set the distance for your indentation.
Select OK in each open window to save your changes and close them.
The hanging indent is applied to all text that uses the selected style.