The indentation of the first line of a paragraph. Paragraph indents. How to make a paragraph indent in Word. Breaking paragraphs into pages.

The red line is familiar to us from the school bench. And if earlier we measured it with the size of our fingers, now Word does it successfully, and we only command it how far the paragraph line should be moved.

Making a paragraph indent in Word 2007

  • If you need to move the entire paragraph to the left or right, and not just one line, we find the “Paragraph” section on the toolbar on the “Home” section, select the button to reduce indent” or “increase indent”, respectively. The cursor should be on the "moved" paragraph.
  • You can adjust the indentation of the red line by calling the window with the right mouse button, in which you should select the line "Paragraph" (or click on the lower right corner of the "Paragraph" section on the top panel). You will see a menu in which you can set the settings not only for the first line, but also for all indents in the document.
  • If you put the cursor at the beginning of the line and press "Tab" on the keyboard, the line will automatically move to the right.
  • You can adjust the indentation of the red line with the sliders at the top of the page; for this, you must first select the text. If the sliders are not visible, you should go to the "View" tab - the "Show or hide" section - check the "Ruler" box.

Indentation in Word 2003

  • We select the text to be formatted, right-click on the "Paragraph" list, in the "Indents" section, set the required interval in the "First Line" field. Or we make the appropriate settings by going to the "Format" on the toolbar - the "Paragraph" subsection.
  • You can also adjust the indents with the slider at the top of the page, which is called by the "View" tab - the "Ruler" section. Select the formatted text.


With these minimal efforts, the necessary formatting of the text in the indentation area is achieved.
Conquer Word and see you soon!

As you know, the first line of each paragraph is usually indented. Is there an easier way to remove all the indentation of the first line instead of removing one by one? Select the paragraph you want to remove the first line indents. Note. This method cannot remove the indentation of the first line using whitespace characters for indentation.

The above methods require several steps to remove all first line indentation, but luckily there is an easier way to remove all first line indentation in a document. Text indentation adds structure to your document, allowing you to separate information. If you want to move a single line or an entire paragraph, you can use the tab selector and horizontal ruler to set tabs and indents.

Creating a paragraph indent, for all its simplicity and prosaicness, often raises many questions. They concern what and how to do paragraph indent, and how to eliminate design errors, and what traditions need to be observed for various purposes.

Why you need a paragraph indent

The red line, or paragraph indent, greatly facilitates the perception of the text, as it visually separates one paragraph from another, structuring the printed strip and emphasizing the logical composition of the text.

How to make a paragraph in a Word: a ruler and its markers

In many types of documents, you can only indent the first line of each paragraph. This helps visually separate paragraphs from each other. It is also possible to indent every line except the first line, which is known as a hanging indent.


In some cases, you may need more control over indentation.

Indent using indent markers

The indent markers are located to the left of the horizontal ruler, and they provide multiple indents.


Retreat with Retreat commands

If you want to select multiple lines of text or all lines of a paragraph, you can use the Indent commands.

To adjust the amount of padding, select the Layout tab next to desired values in the Indent fields.

In paper editions, paragraphs are distinguished by the fact that the beginning of each of them is moved a few characters either to the right (in ordinary texts) or to the left (in presentation texts, booklets, or if a design idea requires it).

On browser pages (in Internet texts), paragraphs do not contain indents, but are separated from each other by an additional line (or increased spacing).

Highlight paragraphs with the same formatting

Using tabs gives you more control over text placement. For example, in a summary, you can align the start of the line and right align the line by adding a right tab as shown in the image below. Generally, if the insertion point is at the beginning of an existing paragraph, it will indent the first line; otherwise it will create a tab. The tab selector is located above the vertical ruler on the left. Hover over the tab selector to see the name of the active tab.

These two design options should not be confused. When laying out a paper edition, paragraph indents should be used and text fragments should not be separated by an increased spacing, and when preparing a text for publication on the web, it is better to use an empty line or an increased spacing - it is in this form that both paper and web text will be easy to read.

Although the Bar tab, First Line Indent, and Hanging Indent appear in the tab selector, they do not have technical tabs.


It's a good idea to remove any tabs you don't use so they don't get in the way. To remove a tab, first select all text that uses tabs.

Indentation and tabs are useful tools for making text easier to read. Depending on your needs, you can use tabs and indents to move a single line or an entire paragraph. Optional: You can download this for additional practice.

Creating a Red Line Using the Paragraph Dialog Box

Paragraph indentation in Word can be created in several ways.

Select some text (the "Select All" tool or Alt and A (F)) and call the "Paragraph" dialog box: "Page Layout" tab, click on the dialog box call button (the small icon to the right of the word "Paragraph" is a triangle inscribed into a square). In the window that appears, select the "Indents and Spacing" tab, find the "Indent" option and in the "Indents" group, set the "First Line" option. The Paragraph dialog box can also be called from the Home tab, Paragraph group.

To create or edit a first line indent or hanging indent







If you want to indent all lines in a paragraph, you can use the Indent commands on the Home tab.


If you prefer to enter indent amounts, you can use the Indent fields on the Page Layout tab. One of the most common paragraphs of a paragraph is the first line indent. You can also increase or decrease the indentation of the entire left side of paragraphs. The Increase Indent or Decrease Indent buttons in the Paragraph group on the Home tab of the ribbon will help you do this.

Creating a red line with a ruler

Select the text and adjust the indents using the slider on the ruler. On the right are two sliders - upper and lower. The bottom one is for leveling regular strings, top - to align the red lines. As you move the top slider, the paragraph indents will change.

To do this, display a horizontal ruler. Then look for the Left Indent, First Line Indent, Hanging Indent, and Right Indent labels. Then drag it to the position on the horizontal ruler where you want the indentation to take place. You can drag the Left Indent marker inward to indent the left side of the paragraph. You can do the same with the Right Indent marker, which indents from the right side of a paragraph.

"First line indent", which is the most common paragraph of a paragraph, sets the indent of the first line of the paragraph. The "hanging indent" is a less commonly used indent. It is used mainly for bibliographies. With a suspended indent, you indent all lines of a paragraph except the first. These lines indent to the position where you set the Hanging Indent marker in the horizontal ruler.

Wrong formatting with spaces

Editors and proofreaders book publishers, as well as university professors, very often have to deal with errors in the design of paragraph indents in manuscripts.

The most common of these is paragraph indentation created with spaces. For some reason, many people prefer to align text, headings, verses with spaces. Often there are even empty lines and text wrapping on next line with this sign. Of course, this makes the work of creating the text time-consuming, and the text naughty. When formatting and layout, the lines “go”, paragraph indents can turn out to be of unequal length, etc. Typesetting such text is very problematic: first you need to get rid of numerous spaces. As regards the registration of student qualifying works, then, unfortunately, the use of spaces damages the student's reputation, as he looks very "dense" and inept.

Indent a paragraph in a word: instructions

You must ensure that the first line indentation is in the left margin of the page for the hanging indent to be effective. The little square marker below that is actually the "Left Indent" marker. Want to change the spacing between a paragraph and page margins, but in vain? Want text to line up above but it just never gets closer? If you are facing similar issues, you are in the right place.

Why you need a paragraph indent

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to use the ruler's indent marker to adjust the spacing between paragraph and page margins and line up text. There are three types of indented paragraph. Left Indent: Increase or decrease the left and right indents of the entire paragraph. First line indent: The first line of a paragraph is indented to differ from the previous paragraph. Hanging indent: All but the first line of a paragraph are indented.

Inappropriate formatting with tabs

The second mistake is the inappropriate use of the "Tab" key. Not only does the text contain unnecessary characters that interfere with the final processing and preparation of the text for printing, they greatly complicate the work on creating the text, obliging the author to endlessly press the key. In addition, the design of paragraph indents using tabulation entails errors: firstly, according to statistics, the author regularly forgets to press the key at the beginning of a new paragraph, and secondly, errors appear when the author decides to break an already existing paragraph into two or more.

Step 2 You will see indent markers on the horizontal ruler. If you want to change the indentation of multiple paragraphs, first select the paragraphs, then position the cursor on the left indent or right indent of the marker and drag it to the new location. To indent the first line, the steps are the same as creating a left and right indent.

How to make a paragraph in a Word: paragraph indent on the right side

In a suspended indent, the second and subsequent lines of a paragraph are indented. The paragraph format includes following characteristics. You can use the following hotkeys and toolbar buttons to apply different alignments to selected paragraphs.


Tabulation is best used only when formatting such fragments of text that differ from the main block: these can be verses, formulations of rules, laws, conclusions, etc. It is quite advisable to format each such fragment using the paragraph indentation created by tabulation.

In Atlantis, any paragraph is either a heading or a body text paragraph. The "outline level" specific to the paragraph format indicates whether the paragraph is a body text paragraph or a heading of any of the 9 levels. This information is used by the Board's title bar to display the structure of the document.

Specifies the distance between the left edge of the page and the left edge of the paragraph. You can also change the left indent for selected paragraphs via the horizontal ruler. Specifies the distance between the right edge of the page and the right edge of the paragraph. You can change the right indent for selected paragraphs via the horizontal ruler.

How to Fix Errors Quickly

If paragraph indents in the text are already erroneously formatted, the text is overflowing with unnecessary non-printable characters, before preparing the text for printing, they must be eliminated. You can check the text for such errors using the Show All Characters tool (Home tab, Paragraph group).

You can eliminate unwanted characters using the Replace tool (Home tab, Editing group). In the "Find" field, enter two spaces, in the "Replace" field, enter one space. Click the "Replace All" button. All double spaces will be replaced with single spaces. Click "Replace All" until the post-replacement report says "Number of replacements made - 0".

Determines the position of the left edge of the line of the first paragraph relative to the rest of the lines of this paragraph.

Adds extra space above the first line of a paragraph and below the last line. In the following illustration, the space in front of the area is displayed yellow, the space after the area is with aqua color.

When "Don" does not add space between paragraphs of the same style, the option is enabled for two adjacent paragraphs, the spacing between them is suppressed if both paragraphs belong to the same paragraph style. Controls the height of each line of a paragraph. Single - the height of each line is determined by the most high symbol in line. 5 lines. The height of a line is the height of that line, with the spacing between lines multiplied by the minimum. - Line height can be no less than the specified value; If the line height with line spacing is greater than the specified value, the line height is the same as the line height with line spacing; Otherwise, the row height will be the specified value. Multiple - line-height is the height of that line, with the spacing between lines multiplied by the specified value. Exactly - the row height is always the specified value. . You can use the following hotkeys and toolbar buttons to apply different line spacing to selected paragraphs.

If the number of spaces before each first line was odd, then the single remaining space would need to be removed. In the "Find" field, insert a paragraph mark ("More" - "Special" - "Paragraph mark") and a space, and in the "Replace" field - only a paragraph mark. The "Replace All" command will eliminate spaces after paragraphs.

How to make a paragraph in a Word: paragraph indent on the left side

Set this attribute on a paragraph if you want it to skip automatic or manual hyphenation. Atlantis will only wrap paragraphs whose Don't Wrap attribute is disabled. Accordingly, if you want to translate a paragraph with a paragraph for which the Do Not Hyphenate attribute is enabled, you must first disable this attribute before running automatic or manual hyphenation on that paragraph.

If we were to use one of the convenient typewriters, may be a tab key. Too many of us have learned to format our writing using paper and pencil. Remember that learning to write in kindergarten- or maybe first grade? My teacher taught us how to press forefinger to the left edge of the paper, and then start writing next to it.

Tabs and many bizarre combinations of unnecessary characters can be removed in a similar way (for example, sometimes, especially when working on text for a long time and repeatedly returning to it, spaces are duplicated by tabs).

After cleaning the file from such errors, you can correctly arrange paragraph indents.

It automatically skips five spaces. However, once our writing tools have changed, our writing procedures must change. Pick up your favorite newspaper and take a look. Take a look at your favorite computer book. Look at a novel, a business letter, a brochure, and a magazine. Today, the way a letter is formatted depends on its purpose. Instruction manuals tend to have wide limits. It seems that novels and newspapers want to type as much text as possible on each page. Business letters, seem to emphasize readability.