Sometimes, the biggest obstacle students face while working on an essay is the program they’re using to write. Have you ever spent an hour fiddling with Microsoft Word trying to create a hanging indent? That’s time that would’ve been better spent actually writing your paper.
Most college-level writing is expected to stick to strict formatting guidelines, but instructors often assume their students come preloaded with the necessary knowledge to create page breaks and title pages. That’s not always the case. Some students may enter college having never used Microsoft Word, or they may have been away from school for a while, or they might have developed their own workarounds (like spamming the ‘Enter’ key to make a page break) that don’t utilize Word to its full potential.
To help students master Microsoft Word, we’ve compiled some simple tutorials for its most common functions.
Page Breaks
There are three simple ways to create a page break in Microsoft Word.
- As seen in the video above, you can navigate to the Insert tab and click Page Break.
- You can also navigate to the Layout tab, select Breaks, and then Page Break
- Or, you can hit CTRL + Enter on your keyboard,
Headers and Footers
If you’re writing a paper in APA or MLA format, you’re going to need to use a header. The specifics for APA format and MLA format are located in our Citation & Documentation section. To edit your header or footer:
- Double-click the top or bottom margin of the page.
- Make your changes.
- Click Close Header and Footer in the Design tab.
Block Quotes
If you’re writing a paper with some longer quotations, you’ll need to know how to format a block quote in Microsoft Word.
- Make sure that the quote is its own paragraph. Delete any indents that might have been added automatically. Then, highlight the text you wish to make into a block quote.
- Move the left margin indicator over to the 0.5 mark.
- You can also navigate to the Layout tab and type “0.5” in the box for Left Indent.
- Or, with your block quote text highlighted, you can simply hit the Tab key.
Hanging Indents
When creating your Works Cited or References page, you’ll need to utilize hanging indents. To create a hanging indent in Microsoft Word:
- Highlight the paragraph/reference (can be multiple) that you want to have a hanging indent.
- Right-click the highlighted text and select Paragraph…
- Under the Indentation section, find the Special dropdown, and select Hanging.