Paragraph spacing and indents

You can customize spacing and indentation for paragraphs to arrange the structure of your document.

To change the settings of a single paragraph, place the cursor anywhere in that paragraph or select the entire paragraph. To change the settings of multiple paragraphs, select them in their entirety.

To customize the spacing and indentation of selected paragraphs, follow the steps below:

1.On the Home tab, in the Paragraph group, click  Paragraph settings.

2.In the window that appears, enter the required numeric values for the following parameters:

•First line: The distance from the left margin of the document to the first line in the paragraph.

•Left indent: The distance from the left margin of the document to the paragraph.

•Right indent: The distance from the right margin of the document to the paragraph.

•Before: The spacing between the current paragraph and the previous paragraph.

•After: The spacing between the current paragraph and the next paragraph.

To quickly increase the paragraph indent by 1.25 cm, on the Home tab, in the Paragraph group, click  Increase indent. When working in macOS, you can also run the Format > Alignment > Increase indent command from the command menu.

To quickly decrease the paragraph indent by 1.25 cm, on the Home tab, in the Paragraph group, click  Decrease indent. When working in macOS, you can also run the Format > Alignment > Decrease indent command from the command menu.

You can also increase the paragraph indent by 1.25 cm by pressing Tab, and decrease it by pressing Backspace (Windows, Linux) or Delete (macOS). If you change the indentation for one paragraph, you should select the whole paragraph or place the cursor strictly at the beginning of the paragraph.