How to Make a Hanging Indent in Word (the Right Way)
If your references don't line up the way APA wants — first line flush left, every line after it indented — you have a hanging indent problem. And if you're solving it with the tab key or the spacebar, you're doing the hardest possible version of a one-click job.
I edit dissertations, articles, and books for a living, and the reference list is where I see the most wasted effort. Let's fix it for good! 🙌🏻
Why the manual way fails
Tabs and spaces look fine until the moment you touch the reference entry — add a source, fix a typo, change the font — and the whole list shifts out of alignment. Reviewers can spot hand-formatting instantly, because it never stays consistent. You end up re-tabbing the same references three times before submission.
A hanging indent isn't something you type. It's a setting.
The one-click way
1. Highlight your reference entries.
2. Open the Paragraph dialog.
– Word for Mac: Format menu → Paragraph (or click the small arrow beside “Paragraph” on the Home tab).
– Word for Windows: right-click your selection → Paragraph (or use the dialog-launcher arrow in the Paragraph group on the Home tab).
3. Under Indentation → Special, choose Hanging. Leave it at the default 0.5".
4. Click OK.
Every selected entry now has a clean half-inch hanging indent — no tabs, no spaces, and it holds even when you edit.
The professional solution: make it a style
Here's the step that saves you across every chapter and every future paper. Instead of reapplying the setting each time, save it once as a style:
Create a new paragraph style — call it APA Ref List — set to Times New Roman 12, black, double-spaced, with the hanging indent built in (Format → Paragraph → Special → Hanging). Zero out any “space after” so your spacing stays even.
Now formatting a reference list is one click: highlight, apply the style, done. Reuse it in every document.
What a hanging indent can't fix
A style handles the macro formatting — indents and spacing. It can't fix the micro details that actually get reference lists flagged: alphabetical order, sentence case on titles, italicizing journal names, en dashes (–) in page ranges, and correct DOIs. Those still need an editor's eye. (I wrote up the seven I catch most in “The Reference List Audit I Run on Every Dissertation,” and you can run the same pass yourself with my free APA 7 Reference List Audit Checklist.)
The takeaway
Set the hanging indent as a paragraph setting, save it as a style, and never fight your reference list by hand again. Then let the style handle the spacing while you — or your editor — handle the details that make a reference list submission-ready.
Want the whole formatting system, not just references? My full APA 7 formatting-in-Word walkthrough is coming soon. And if you'd like a second set of eyes before you submit, I offer a free sample edit.