In the most recent edition of the APA Manual, the authors have gone back to a reference format that was once the standard.  They dropped the standard in the last edition, and now, thankfully, it's back.

This style really is much preferred over the temporary change in the last edition of the APA Manual.  There they used paragraph indents for each reference.  This really is reader-unfriendly, since it's often the first word in a reference (the first author's last name) that you're scanning for when you look down a reference list.   To "hide" the last name by paragraph indenting it was pretty stooopid, if you ask me.

Now your references are, once again, supposed to have "hanging indents."  These are GREAT, from a reader's perspective.  The first author's last name hangs out there for all to see.  With modern word processing software, it's child's play to make a hanging indent.  This change shouldn't cause anxiety in folks who are comfortable with word processing.   I'll walk you through how to do it in Word.

You could simply type all of your references without worrying about the hanging indent, hitting return only at the end of each reference.  This will look a bit ugly as you type, but not to worry.  Since you only want the hanging indent to affect your references (not the whole paper), you could, after you type them, block them (click and drag), and then go up to the little bar above your typing area where inches are marked off.  At the left side of this bar you'll find 3 little grey symbols (one on top and two below).  If you drift your cursor over each of these 3 little symbols (two are, sort of, triangles and one is a rectangle) each symbol will tell you what it does for a living.  You should find that the little triangle on the bottom says "Hanging Indent."  Oooh, you say!!!  That sounds relevant, and it is!!!  Carefully click on the tip of this little triangle with your left clicker and drag it over to .5 inches in from the margin.  Magic then happens, all of your references format perfectly.  If they don't, you may have made the dreaded mistake of hitting Enter at the end of each line - that's very bad.  Delete those Enters!!

If you want to see your references format perfectly as you type, you could simply move your little pyramid before starting the first reference; that should work too.

When we grade your APA papers, we're going to be checking to see that you've formatted your hanging indents our way.  To do these references with an Enter at the end of each line and a Tab, or even worse-Spaces, at the beginning of each subsequent line in a reference is considered a mortal sin.  It's a total waste of your valuable time.  Our job is to make certain that you do things efficiently.  For example, your paragraph indents in the main body of the paper should always be done with Tabs and anything that's centered, should be centered using the text formatting option, not by putting in a bunch of spaces.

Click here if you want to see how to get these hanging indents onto a web page.

Good luck, and we're here to help!