Hanging Indents in Word

From: Office-letter.com

Works with Word 97 and above

We've covered how to indent a paragraph

(http://www.officeletter.com/prem/v03/n06.html#indent) and how to

adjust indents using the ruler bar

(http://www.officeletter.com/prem/v01/n52.html#margins).  However,

those instructions described techniques for indenting the first

line of a paragraph or the entire paragraph. 

What if you want to create a hanging indent (in which the

paragraph's first line is up against the left margin and all

remaining lines in the paragraph are indented)?

Move your insertion point (the flashing vertical bar that indicates

where your cursor is) to any point within the paragraph you want to

indent, then choose one of these three options:

OPTION 1: USE THE MENU

Use the Format/Paragraph command.  Select the Indents and Spacing

tab, and in the Indentation section, select Hanging from the pull-

down menu options for the Special field.

OPTION 2: KEYBOARD SHORTCUT

Press Ctrl + T to indent to the first tab setting (or one-half inch

if no tabs have been set).  Each time you press Ctrl + T, the

hanging (indented) text will move to the next tab setting. 

Gone too far?  Press Ctrl + Shift + T to go in the opposite

direction -- the indented text's left "margin" moves to the left.

OPTION 3: USE THE RULER BAR

Notice the bottom part of the ruler bar.  It contains an up-

pointing triangle, indicating the position of the hanging indent. 

In "regular" paragraphs (those with no indents), the up-pointing

triangle will be positioned at the left margin.  To manually change

the amount of space preceding the hanging indent, drag this

triangle icon to the right along the ruler bar. 

For example, for a "regular" paragraph, drag the up-pointing

triangle to the right and you'll see how the paragraph is

immediately formatted with a hanging indent. 

Note: It doesn't matter where your insertion bar is within the

paragraph.  In other words, it doesn't have to be at the beginning

of the paragraph.  As long it's somewhere inside the paragraph that

you want to format, dragging the triangle will create the hanging

indent for that paragraph.

-- James E. Powell