"Hanging indents" explained...

The "hanging-indent" and how to make it happen....

The purpose of the "hanging-indent" format is to allow the reader to skim a bibliography quickly, without distractions, to see what authors have been cited. It does this by visually isolating, at the left margin, the name or word under which the item is alphabetized, and it looks like this:

China. Inspectorate General of Customs, The Maritime Customs. III. - Miscellaneous
            Series Nº30. Treaties,Conventions, etc., between China and Foreign States.
            2nd ed., 2 vols. (Shanghai:   Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General
            of Customs, 1917; reprinted in New York: AMS Press, 1973)
            [JX 926 1917 C5 1973]

Eastman, Lloyd E. Family, Fields, and Ancestors: Constancy and Change in China's
Social and Economic History, 1550-1949 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1988) [HN 733 E25 1988]

Wright, Arthur F. Buddhism in Chinese History (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1959) [BL 1430 .W7]

_______, ed. Confucianism and Chinese Civilization (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1964) [DS 727 .W7]

How do you get your bibliography to look like this? If you're using MicroSoft Word, do NOT follow the instructions on the Help menu (see "technical stuff" below for a description of the problems you can get into). If you're using WordPerfect, their Help directions are OK. Instead, follow these directions:

For both MS Word & WordPerfect: assume you're starting with all of your bibliographic entries done in straight block format, e.g.:

China. Inspectorate General of Customs, The Maritime Customs. III. - Miscellaneous Series Nº30. Treaties,Conventions, etc., between China and Foreign States. 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1917; reprinted in New York: AMS Press, 1973) [JX 926 1917 C5 1973]

Eastman, Lloyd E. Family, Fields, and Ancestors: Constancy and Change in China's Social and Economic History, 1550-1949 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) [HN 733 E25 1988]

Wright, Arthur F. Buddhism in Chinese History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959) [BL 1430 .W7]

_______, ed. Confucianism and Chinese Civilization (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964) [DS 727 .W7]

and with a double line between each entry.

Next, "select" the entire bibliography's text, and:

in MS Word: click on "Format | paragraph", then go to the pull-down menu under "special", and click on "hanging".
In WordPerfect: Once you've got the whole text selected, hit Control-F7 for the same result.

Technical stuff: it looks as if the first line of each entry starts at the left margin, but then each subsequent line of the same entry gets indented one tab-stop. If you follow Word's "help" screen, this is indeed what you'll get, but the result is a clumsy, inadequate, jerry-rigged facsimile that most likely will not survive any editing of the text or changes in font-size or margins -- instead, you may well end up with a diagonal line of empty tabs/spaces slashed across your text. Rather, the more effective formatting codes (which you can see via WordPerfect's "reveal codes" mode) are these: first, a "Left Indent" moves the entire paragraph/entry in by one tab-stop; next, a "Back Tab" ["margin-release"] command moves the first line back to the original left margin, but wraps each subsequent line to the new left margin.