Automatically Indent New Paragraphs

by Dee Hobbs
(Lithonia, Georgia )

In Word 2007, what key do I use to indent with sentence wrap-around when using the hard return key?

ANSWER:

You can use the tab key to indent the first line of a paragraph. But if you want Word 2007 to automatically indent a new paragraph when pressing Enter, you only need to change a few settings.

It's not hard to do! Just follow these steps:

  1. In your document, highlight the paragraphs you want to format.
  2. In the ribbon on the Home tab, find the Paragraph group, then click the launcher launcher. The Paragraph dialog box opens.
  3. Click the Indents and Spacing tab.
  4. In the Indentation group under Special, Select First Line.
  5. Under By, select the desired indent. The default is .5".

    The Word 2007 Paragraph Formatting dialog box
  6. Click OK.

I like to add some breathing room between paragraphs. In the figure above, you can see that I added 15pt spacing before each paragraph. This looks nice with a 12pt font that is single-spaced.

Once this paragraph formatting is applied, pressing Enter will start the next paragraph 15pt below the current line, with the first line indented half-an-inch.

If you want the same paragraph indent in every document, in the Paragraph dialog box, change the settings as desired, click Default, then click OK. These new settings become your default settings for every new Word 2007 document until the default is changed again.

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