How To Create Hanging Indent On Google Docs And The Best Ways To Use Them

We all want to make our writings very beautiful and attractive in front of our readers, right? And for this purpose, we have to use many ways to make our page beautiful. One of those ways is using hanging indent on Google Docs.

Hanging indent on Google Docs can easily make the page more attractive and easy to read. First of all, we have to know the exact meaning of a hanging indent.

A hanging indent is that when the second or the other subsequent lines of a text are indented to the right side, the first lines can be seen as the only line touching the margin of the page. Mainly, you can use a hanging indent in the writings like, bibliography, Works Cited or works like reference pages.

The hanging indents are really a need in the styles like, the Modern Language Association (MLA), Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) and also the American Psychological Association (APA). While you are working in an office or reading in any academic institution knowing the ways of creating a hanging indent can be very helpful for you.

How to create hanging indent on Google docs:

First of all, ensure that the ruler is visible in the doc. The ruler is a tool of measuring the alignment of the texts, tables, graphics and many more. Therefore, to make the ruler visible, you have to click on the “View” area in the navigation bar and check the “Show Ruler” option.

Now, your ruler is visible and your can easily start your work of creating the hanging indent.

1. The first step is to select the text, which you want to indent. You can select one or more than one paragraphs as per your choice.

2. After that, drag the left indent marker( the small blue inverted triangle, in picture below it is marked with a red circle) to the right side, you can stop where you want your hanging indent to start- the rectangle will come along, but don’t worry about that.

3. Now, drag the First line indent marker, which is the blue rectangle, back to the margin of the left side.

4. And you are successful in creating hanging indent on Google Docs.

The best ways to use the hanging indents:

Mainly the goal of creating a hanging indent is to make the paragraph much easier to read, where the first line aligns with the left margin but the other portion of the paragraph is indented. Nowadays, you can see hanging indents are used in the reference part of a formal paper. You can also get to see a hanging indent in other types of writings as well. In printings, hanging indents are used in contents with the margins, in the writings like, side notes or illustrations.

Google Docs offers some special tools to format paragraph with a hanging indent without using the Tab key. If you use the Tab key, even a very small edit to the text can force you to realign each line of the paragraph. The Google Docs also has the option of a first line indent. This is used to indent the first line of a paragraph. After knowing about the first line indent, you can also realize what a negative indent is.

Figure A

With the indent options, you can also examine options of paragraph spacing. Like the indents, spacing between the paragraphs can also help immensely while reading.

Here is the way to reformat a paragraph with the hanging indents on Google docs:

1. Open the Google doc in a desktop class web browser like Chrome, macOS, Chrome OS, Linux and others.
2. Select the paragraph which you want to format with a hanging indent. If you don’t select the text, then the indent option will apply only to the paragraph where the cursor is situated.
3. Now from the menus, you have to choose Format| Align & Indent | Indentation Options | then from the drop down named Special Indent choose the option Hanging (showed in figure B).
4. The default indent is 0.5 inches, but you can easily change the value less or more than that.
5. Lastly, select Apply option.

Figure B:

The Google Docs allows manual adjustments of margins as well. To use this, you have to enable the on-screen ruler (View-Show ruler), then select the text and move the two-blue down pointed arrows to adjust the margins or the blue horizontal rectangle to operate the indent of first line. You can do adjustments to the margins of a paragraph by using Format| Align & Indent | Indentation options| Settings. (Showed in figure C).

Figure C:

How to format a paragraph in Google Docs with a first line indent:

A first line indent moves the first line of your text from the margin. Sometimes people use the Tab key prior to typing the text in a paragraph. But if you can use the paragraph format option properly, you don’t have to use the Tab key.

1. Select the paragraph to use the first line indent.
2. From menu, choose Format| Align & Indent| Indentation Options| then, from Special Indent drop-down, select First Line option.
3. You can modify the default indent of 0.5 inches easily.

In this ways you can easily decorate your entire document to make it more attractive and beautiful before your readers without any difficulty.

Are you interested in reading more on science and technology topics? You can read the blog on How to Delete Spotify Account in A Few Simple Steps.