How to do a hanging indent in Word for APA 7 references (and why it keeps breaking)

A hanging indent means the first line of a reference entry starts at the left margin and every following line is indented half an inch (1.27 cm). APA 7 and MLA 9 both require it on every entry in the reference list. In Word it takes one dialog; the reason it goes wrong for so many papers is that the entries were typed as several short paragraphs, or padded with tabs, and the indent then lands on the wrong lines. Upload the paper to the free hanging indent tool and both the indent and the broken entries are repaired.

In Word

1. Select every entry in the reference list.
2. Open the Paragraph dialog (right-click → Paragraph, or the small arrow in the Paragraph group on the Home tab).
3. Under Indentation, set Special to Hanging and By to 0.5".
4. While you are there, set Line spacing to Double and Spacing After to 0 pt.

Keyboard shortcut: with the entries selected, Ctrl+T (Cmd+T on a Mac) applies a hanging indent.

In Google Docs

Select the entries, then Format → Align & indent → Indentation options → Special indent → Hanging, 0.5. Or drag the ruler: move the left indent marker (the rectangle) to 0.5 and the first-line marker (the triangle) back to 0.

Why it breaks

Each entry must be one paragraph. If you pressed Enter at the end of every line to make the entry look right on screen, Word sees three paragraphs, and a hanging indent gives you three first lines flush left. The fix is to delete the line breaks so the entry wraps on its own.

Tabs and spaces are not indents. Aligning the second line with spaces or a tab looks right at one font size and collapses at another. Remove them and let the paragraph setting do it.

Soft line breaks (Shift+Enter) inside an entry behave like the first problem: the line after the break is indented, but the line breaks early and leaves a ragged gap.

Checking it automatically

Veermat rejoins entries that were typed as several lines, removes tabs and blank lines between entries, applies the half-inch hanging indent and double spacing to every entry, sorts the list alphabetically, and moves the References heading to its own page. The APA format checker reports on the list along with the rest of the paper.