Also known as reverse indent or a second line indent, writers use hanging indents for reference lists in various citation styles like American Psychological Association (APA), Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) and Modern Language Association (MLA), making it easy for the reader to distinguish between one entry and the next. When you create a hanging indent, the first sentence begins at the margin and each following line starts at a distance of 1.27 cm (0.5 inches) from the margin. What Is A Hanging Indent?Ī hanging indent is a paragraph indentation style that indents all lines of a text block except the first one.

In this article, we explain hanging indents and explore different ways to apply a hanging indent in Word. Knowing how to apply hanging indents is helpful when writing an academic research paper or similar document that follows a particular citation style. Hanging indents make it easy for readers to distinguish between consecutive references, citations and bibliographies and quickly identify the author's name or title of work.

Hanging indents are a formatting style where the first line of a paragraph starts at the margin and all subsequent lines begin half-inch away from the margin.

How to use first line indent in word