Hanging Indents

Occasionally, I get asked how to remove the hanging indents from a bibliography.The hanging indents, as I’m sure you know, are the bits where the first line of a reference hangs out beyond the second on the left of the page – this is much harder to describe than to show:

This can be referenced (Burn, 1969), and so can this (Aristotle, 1984).

Aristotle (1984) 'Politics.' In: J. Barnes, (ed. The Complete Works of Aristotle, the Revised Oxford Translation Princeton University Press, 1982-2129.

Burn, A. R. (1969) 'Hammond on Marathon: A Few Notes.' The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 89, 118-120.

Some referencing styles want this, and some do not. It is not something you can control from the style.

To change this, you will need to middle tab from the familiar (at least from the last few weeks posts) Format Bibliography dialog, accessed by the box with an arrow in it in the Bibliography group of the Endnote tab.

The entry in the bottom left ‘Hanging indent:’ controls the size of the indent. Setting this value to zero will remove the indent entirely.

As you can see from this dialog, there are a number of other things you can control – the font and size of the bibliography, a title for it, the line spacing and so on. It is worth having a bit of a play with these settings to see what you can change, and select some which you like.