It's easier done than said (works for Word on PC or MAC):
See instructions for your phone or smaller devices
- Place your cursor at the beginning of your citation, and highlight it.
- Right click your mouse
- Select Paragraph from the resulting pop up menu
- Under Indentation, use the Special pull-down menu to select hanging
- Use the By menu to select 0.5"
- Select OK.
For multiple Citations in a References, Works Cited or Bibliography Page
- Once you've applied the hanging indent using the technique above, hit enter after your citation.
- If you are typing your citation it should keep the same formatting. If you are pasting in your citation, right click when you paste and select the paste as text option (looks like a A on clipboard) and Word will automatically apply all the formatting you've already done, including hanging indent, spacing, font, etc. Alternatively you could wait until all your citations are on your bib, highlight them all at once, then use the 5 steps as listed above.
Create a Hanging indent on your phone
You might not see the options on your phone. The key is to rotate the screen to landscape mode so you can see the available options (see images below to see the difference). Here are the steps:
- Once you have typed in the text you want for your block quote, tap enter/return before the first word of the quote and after the last word of the quote.
- Highlight the text that you want to indent.
- Rotate your device so that you're viewing it in landscape mode.
- Choose the indent option and you're good. If for some reason you can' do that, you'll have to tap the dot options that represent more menu options, but that will take more steps.
View In Portrait Mode
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Right click and select paragraph in the drop down menu. From there, you will see a box labelled Special. Select Hanging from the drop down menu. Hope that helps!
Thank you.
We didn't even bring this up in class. THANKS SO MUCH!
(Computer literacy made easy!!!) :)
It will automatically format with the hanging indent!
It sounds to me like the other citations you tried to format were probably copied and pasted into your Word document, and it probably brought over some formatting with it. You can click the paragraph symbol in the Paragraph section in the Ribbon to reveal formatting. In 2010, it's the symbol on the top right of that area. Remove any unwanted breaks.
You can also try re-pasting, and choose to merge formatting or keep the text only, and one of those options should eliminate that formatting. If you keep the text only, be sure to change the font, add back any italics, etc.
My options are indentation before text and after text. Both affect the entire paragraph.
There is also no ruler at the top of the screen to make any adjustments and there isn't one under the view menu to turn on. (11/16/14)
According to Microsoft, "Word Online will preserve a hanging indent already in your document, but it doesn't yet provide a way to add one."
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Can-I-create-a-hanging-indent-in-Word-Online-905cd317-ca20-4a3c-a204-b2a9f91c9295
FYI: Google Drive/Docs can do this easily and allows downloading as MS .docx.
No, you cannot create a hanging indent in Google Docs they way you would in Word, but there is a work around solution:
1. After entering you citation, hit enter after the first line.
2. At the beginning of the second line of your citation, us the increase indent option on the Google docs toolbar.
3. Your citation will now be both double spaced and have a hanging indent. If your citation has more than two lines, you'll need to hit enter after the second line as well, but the indent will already be there.
There issue is probably that you brought over the formatting from the source from which you copied the text. To start fresh, highlight the text that needs the hanging indent, and then right click. You will get two dialog boxes. The top one is for changing the font. Look for the button (should be to the far right) that says Styles, with a capitalized A and a paint brush. Click that, and a new box will appear. Choose the Clear formatting option, towards the bottom of the list. Now, keep the text highlighted and then follow the instructions for hanging indent. You will probably need to change the font style and size and add back in italics and that kind of thing.
The next time you bring over text, use the Paste button at the top left in the clipboard section. Click on the arrow at the bottom of the clipboard Paste icon. You will see 3 options to paste. Choose the middle one, called merge formatting. This should pick up the correct formatting that you just applied so you don't have to take all of these steps again. Use the merge formatting paste option going forward.
If this does not work, feel free to contact us. You can either start a chat, if the library is open, using the chat box on the right hand side of our MLA LibGuide, or any other COM Library page, or email us at ask@com.libanswers.com. Hope this helps!
The directions do still work for Word 2013. If you are having issues, you might need to remove formatting that was brought over when you pasted your citation. The command for this is in the Font section of the Home tab. It's the icon with an "A" and a red eraser. For instructions, go to this link: http://www.howtogeek.com/166537/how-to-remove-all-formatting-from-selected-text-in-word-2013-documents/
After that, highlight your citation again and follow the steps to create a hanging indent.
I'm not sure what you mean by Hanging Indent Toggle. Did you follow the directions in the original answer? When you paste your text, use the remove formatting button. To access the paragraph dialog box, put your cursor in front of the 1st line of text. Right click with your mouse. Select the Paragraph menu. Then in the Indentation section, select Hanging from the drop down menu. Change the spacing if necessary, then hit done.
It sounds like maybe you are using the Ruler tool. While I'm sure it's possible, that's harder to explain here briefly. I edited a paragraph formatted as you describe using this method, and it worked.
1. Highlight the citation
2. On the Word toolbar find Paragraph and click on the small arrow on the lower right side to open all paragraph options.
3. Select Paragraph from the resulting pop up menu
4. Under Indentation, use the Special pull-down menu to select hanging
5. Use the By menu to select 0.5"
Yes, every line AFTER the 1st line will have a hanging indent. Only the 1st line will begin at the left margin. Glad you found the instructions helpful!
If the paragraph option isn't appearing when you right click, you can also use the Paragraph option in the top of the ribbon. Follow this link (you might have to copy and paste) to see instructions from Windows: http://www.word-2010.com/hanging-indent/
Yes, feel free to share with your students.
I have been trying to figure this out for so long. I finally gave up in my last class and lost points because I could not get the second line to indent without everything indenting. I thought I had tried everything but I never tried this.
need to repeat for each reference.
FYI, as indicated on the header of all our pages, the library is COM Library. Our location is on the footer of every page. This is a common convention on web pages.
Once you've applied the hanging indent using the technique above, hit enter after the citation. If you are typing your citation it should keep the same formatting. If you are pasting in your next citation as most people do, right click when you paste and select the paste as text option (looks like a A on clipboard) and Word will automatically apply all the formatting you've already done, including hanging indent, spacing, font, etc.
Alternatively you could wait until all your citation are on your bib, highlighting them all then use the same 5 steps as listed above.
I am going to amend the answer above to include this info on how to apply to more than one entry in case anyone else is having this dilemma.