Pages

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

HTML code for hanging indents for APA style reference list

REFERENCES
<div style="padding-left: 4em; text-indent: -4em;">

<p>...first reference...</p>
<p>...second reference...</p>
<p>...etc...</p>
</div>


Note: don't rely on your blogging tool to use paragraph codes automatically, Blogger doesn't.

I've written from time to time about how to cite electronic sources for APA style reference lists, yet it took me a while to discover a way to achieve online the appearance of hanging indents required in APA style for papers in print.

Students. BEFORE you freak - you might not need to use that code at all.


I think educators who are encouraging students to write online, if they require students to include proper APA style in-text citations and reference lists at all, possibly wouldn't be insisting on the hanging indents.  This could be because many such educators (who may be but a few online experiments ahead of their students) may not yet themselves have discovered html code that will work. Or more likely because the priority reasons that educators want their students writing online do not (and shouldn't necessarily) include in-depth familiarity with html code.

So, if you are really required to be writing academically in a blog or otherwise online, and are required to include references in APA style, you might like to check first whether your assessor wants the references hanging.

15 comments:

  1. Hi,
    Well as an educator who wants my students to cite in APA style in their blogs I can assure you that I'm not at all concerned about indentation. This is more a case of checking they have in fact consulted outside sources to write their post, not about proper structure etc.
    You really do like to make things difficult for yourself don't you. :-) LOL
    Not long till you leave now... if I don't see you before then have a fab time in America
    Loretta

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for this helpful tip! You saved me hours of aggravation.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you, that's just what I needed to know.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I can not thank you enough!! You probably saved me a headache and many hours of frustration!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. As an educator who welcomes quality work from his students, I find this very useful. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Very helpful. I have to use "div" for every line though. A lot of thanks anyway!

    https://khmerspelling.blogspot.com/p/references.html

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm an educator needing a way for students to create hanging indentations in our annotated bibliography wiki. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Just chiming in to say, "Thank You!" for making this available. I use it in my online courses many times almost every day. Much appreciated! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Here we are, 10 years later, in 2020 and this was super helpful for my assignment. I used the CSS for a website stylesheet, not a blog post, and it worked perfectly.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wow! Thanks for letting me know that this worked for you Cathy.

      Delete
  10. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  11. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete

ABOUT COMMENTING HERE:
1. You can use some HTML tags, such as <b>, <i>, <a>

2. Apparently blogspot requires that we allow third party cookies for the darn feature to work. Sorry, nothing I can do about it - Google will lead you to instructions.

3. I don't generally post on contentious issues so I don't expect problems.
However, I will delete comments I consider:
disrespectful, destructive, irrelevant or SPAM, (even sucking up: praising my post without reason while linking to a business site).