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Citation & Format Guide: MS Word Formatting Tips

Tips

HANGING INDENTATIONS

Chicago/Turabian style and other citation styles require that you format your bibliographical entries with hanging indentations.  A hanging indentation is when your top line sticks out half an inch to the left past any remaining lines below.  Hanging indentations make bibliography lists easier to search through:

Ali, Shaheen Sardar. “Teaching and Learning Islamic Law in a Globalized World: Some Reflections and Perspectives.” Journal of Legal Education 61, no. 2 (2011): 206-30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42898373. 

Azam, Hina. Sexual Violation in Islamic Law: Substance, Evidence, and Procedure. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. https://www.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316145722.

HOW TO FORMAT HANGING INDENTATIONS

Microsoft Word: Highlight the text you wish to format to hanging indentation, or get to where you want to start formatting that way.  Under the Home tab at the top, look for the Paragraph section of the menu (it looks like the image to the left). 

Click on the tiny expand box in the bottom right corner. 

The menu to the right should appear.  In the middle, under Indentation, there is a pull-down menu labelled Special.  Click on it, and select Hanging.  The box to the right, By, should automatically set to 0.5" or half an inch. 

Google Docs: There is a similar way to format hanging indentations in Google Docs.  Highlight the text you want to format that way, or get to the place in your document where you want to start formatting hanging indentations.  On the top menu bar, click on Format, then Align & Indent, and then Indentation Options.  Under Special indent, select Hanging and set it to .5 (inches).

Apple Pages, Microsoft Word, and Google Docs: All three programs allow you to format a hanging indentation through the ruler function.  Highlight the text you want to format that way or get to where you want to start formatting that way.  Then, if it is not already on, turn on the ruler function: in Microsoft Word, click on View in the top menu, and check the box for Ruler, or else type in Show Ruler into the Tell me what you want to do search; if you are using Apple Pages or Google Docs, click on View in the top menu, and select Show Ruler.  In Microsoft Word, the ruler like this should appear:

Look for the hourglass-shaped triangles and box on the left.  Click and hold on the box at the bottom of the hourglass, and slide it it half an inch to the right.  Then, click on the top downward-pointing triangle, and slide it half an inch back to the left, where it started.

In Apple Pages the ruler looks like this: 

And in Google Docs, the ruler looks like this:

Look for the downward-pointing triangle and bar on the left.  Click and hold on the downward-pointing triangle, and slide it it half an inch to the right.  Then, click on the top little bar, and slide it half an inch back to the left, where it started.

Finally, if the program or platform you are typing in does not have any option for making hanging indentations, you can always try preparing the hanging indented entries in Word, Pages, or Google Docs, and then copying and pasting them into the uncooperative program.  That's what I had to do to get hanging indents to work in this LibGuide!