Tuesday, December 11, 2012

hanging indents: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Tuesday, December 11, 2012

hanging indents
Bibliographies are normally written using hanging indents, where the first line extends out to the left-hand margin, but the rest of the entry is indented:
Hoffman, Andrew Jay. Inventing Mark Twain: The Lives of
   Samuel Langhorne
. New York: William Morrow, 1997.
These are extremely easy to create on a word processor, but many people have never mastered the technique. Normally the left-hand margin marker at the top of the page consists of two small arrows. Drag the top one to the right to make a normal indent, the bottom one to create a hanging indent. In most programs, you have to hold down the Shift key while dragging the bottom marker to leave the top part behind. Don’t get into the habit of substituting a carriage return and a tab or spaces to create hanging indents because when your work is transferred to a different computer the result may look quite different—and wrong.

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