Formatting A Hanging Indent - Citing Your Sources

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3. Citing Your Sources
4. Formatting a Hanging Indent

Enter Search Words Search Citing Your Sources This guide will help you cite your sources properly to avoid plagiarism, important for students to maintain academic integrity. It also introduces various tools for creating and managing citations, including library-supported Zotero.

• Overview
• Citation Styles
  • APA Style
  • MLA Style
  • Chicago Style
  • Other Styles
• Generating Citations
• Formatting a Hanging Indent
  • What is a hanging indent?
  • Hanging indents in Microsoft Word
  • Hanging indents in Google Docs
• How to Cite Artificial Intelligence
• Zotero Citation Manager
• Annotated Bibliographies
• Help!

What is a hanging indent?

Hanging indents are used in the works cited or bibliography of MLA, APA, Chicago, and various other citation styles. They allow the reader to easily see the breaks between separate citations and quickly scan a works cited or bibliography for author names. A hanging indent is required to format your works cited or bibliography properly. See the image below for an example of what a hanging indent looks like.

Follow the instructions below to format a hanging indent in Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

Hanging indents in Microsoft Word

Use the following steps to format a hanging indent in Microsoft Word. These steps work in both the full desktop version and the Office 365 online version of Word.

1. Highlight the citation(s) you want to indent. If you have multiple citation entries, make sure there is a single line of space between each one.
2. Right click and select "Paragraph."
3. Under "Indentation - Special" select "Hanging."
4. Click "OK."

Hanging indents in Google Docs

Use the following steps to format a hanging indent in Google Docs.

1. Highlight the citation(s) you want to indent. If you have multiple citation entries, make sure there is a single line of space between each one.
2. Along the top menu, click on "Format," then go down to "Align & indent," then click on "Indentation options."
3. In the Indentation options menu, under "Special," select "Hanging."
4. Click "Apply."

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• Last Updated: Apr 17, 2025 5:34 PM
• URL: https://libguides.ccsu.edu/citations
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Login to LibApps Report a problem Subjects: Citation and Research Management Tools, Interdisciplinary, Style Guides (MLA, APA, etc.) Tags: annotated bibliography, apa, Chicago style, citations, citing_sources, hanging indent, mendeley, mla, plagiarism, refworks, style_manuals, zotero

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