Hanging indent
A paragraph shape where the first line sits flush left and every later line is indented, used for reference-list entries in most styles.
A hanging indent puts the author's surname at the left margin and pushes the rest of the entry inward, usually by half an inch. That makes the alphabetical column scannable: a reader looking for Okafor runs their eye down the left edge and finds it.
APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and Turabian all require it in the reference list. Numeric styles usually do not, because the bracketed number does the scanning job instead.
Set it with your word processor's paragraph settings, not with spaces or line breaks. Manual spacing collapses the moment the font, margins, or page size changes.
Do it on CitationEasy
See also
Reference listThe alphabetised list at the end of a paper containing a full entry for every source cited in the text — and nothing else.Works CitedMLA's name for the reference list — the alphabetised record of every source cited in the paper.BibliographyA list of sources at the end of a work that may include material you consulted but never cited.