You can also apply the setting to several blocks of text at once by selecting multiple paragraphs. If you want to apply the hanging indent to a single paragraph, place your blinking cursor in that paragraph of text first or select the paragraph as a whole. Applying a hanging indent will keep the first line in the usual position, square against the margins of your document, with each further line indented inwards. RELATED: How To Automatically Add Citations And Bibliographies To Microsoft Word Adding a Hanging Indent to a Microsoft Word DocumentĪ hanging indent can be applied to individual paragraphs or to the document as a whole. You can use hanging indents for any reason, however, as they allow you to emphasise the start of each new paragraph for clarity. You’ll see hanging indents applied when you add bibliographies in Microsoft Word to satisfy the style guide requirements of certain types of academic documents. If you want to add hanging indents to a Microsoft Word document, here’s what you’ll need to do. Everything else is the same as shown above.A hanging indent is used to position the first line of each paragraph against the margin, with each further line indented.

You can enter your custom margins and then click on the Default button. To set default margins in Word 2003, select Page Setup from the File menu. Click OK to accept the different values, rather than clicking on the Default (or Set As Default) button. You can also select Custom Margins from the drop-down menu on the Margins button and enter the desired custom values in the Margins section on the Page Setup dialog box. If you need to temporarily change the margins to values other than the default values for a specific document in Word, click the Page Layout tab and select a set of predefined margin values from the drop-down menu. NOTE: When you click Yes on confirmation dialog box, the Page Setup dialog box is also closed. NOTE: In Word 2010 and later, the Default button is called Set As Default.Ī confirmation dialog box displays making sure you want to change the default settings for Page Setup.

Enter the margins you want to use as the default margins in the Top, Bottom, Left, and Right edit boxes in the Margins section.

Changing margins in word 2011