Hanging Indents & Spacing
The single most serious impediment to efficient processing by CiteRefs is caused by authors improperly formatting the reference lists - in particular, in achieving the hanging indents called for by the PMAPA. You may well be reading this page because we returned your document without scanning it because of reference formatting problems.
Briefly, the reference list
- should be headed by the single centered word "References", spelled and capitalized as shown.
- should be double-spaced throughout.
- should have each reference with a "hanging indent" - i.e. the first line un-indented, subsequent lines indented (usually by 1/2 inch).
A well-formatted reference should look about like this:
References
Keyes, M. W., Hanley-Maxwell, C., & Capper, C. A. (1999). “Spirituality? It’s the core of my leadership”: Empowering leadership in an inclusive elementary school. Educational Administration Quarterly, 35, 203-237.
Ladson-Billings, B. (1992) Reading between the lines and beyond the pages: A culturally relevant approach to literacy teaching. Theory into Practice, 31 (4), 312-320.
(On this web page, the empty line between the two references is a bit more spacious than the blank lines separating the lines within a reference. In the word processor, they will be the same.) You can also refer to section 5.18 in the PMAPA, and look at the example on p. 313.
If you were to turn on the "invisible character" switch in MS Word by clicking the clicking the little icon in the tool bars at the top that looks like ¶, and says "Show all" when you point at it, the above references will look like this:
References
Keyes, M. W., Hanley-Maxwell, C., & Capper, C. A. (1999). “Spirituality? It’s the core of my leadership”: Empowering leadership in an inclusive elementary school. Educational Administration Quarterly, 35, 203-237.¶
Ladson-Billings, B. (1992) Reading between the lines and beyond the pages: A culturally relevant approach to literacy teaching. Theory into Practice, 31 (4), 312-320.¶
The ¶ character (paragraph end) is what gets inserted when you press the <Enter> key on your keyboard. Tabs appear as ->.
What the automated scanner doesn't "see" is the indenting. It just sees a stream of characters such as
Keyes, M. W., Hanley-Maxwell, C., & Capper, C. A. (1999). “Spirituality? It’s the core of my leadership”: Empowering leadership in an inclusive elementary school. Educational Administration Quarterly, 35, 203-237.¶Ladson-Billings, B. (1992) Reading between the lines and beyond the pages: A culturally relevant approach to literacy teaching. Theory into Practice, 31 (4), 312-320.¶ ...
The only way it knows where one reference ends and the next begins is that it "sees" the ¶ marks separating them.
The Golden Rule: There should be only one ¶ in each reference - at its end.
That is the only way the CiteRefs automated scanner can know where one reference ends and the next begins.
A poorly formatted reference list might look like this, or worse:
References
Keyes, M. W., Hanley-Maxwell, C., & Capper, C. A. (1999). “Spirituality? It’s the core of my leadership”: ¶
Empowering leadership in an inclusive elementary school. Educational Administration Quarterly, ¶
35, 203-237.¶Ladson-Billings, B. (1992) Reading between the lines and beyond the pages: A culturally relevant approach ¶
to literacy teaching. Theory into Practice, 31 (4), 312-320.¶
In this case, the scanner sees
Keyes, M. W., Hanley-Maxwell, C., & Capper, C. A. (1999). “Spirituality? It’s the core of my leadership”: ¶Empowering leadership in an inclusive elementary school. Educational Administration Quarterly, ¶35, 203-237.¶Ladson-Billings, B. (1992) Reading between the lines and beyond the pages: A culturally relevant approach ¶to literacy teaching. Theory into Practice, 31 (4), 312-320.¶ ...
Here, the author pressed the <Enter> key at the end of each line instead of at the end of each reference. If the author used tabs to indent, you'll also see the tab symbol ->. This destroys CiteRefs' ability to tell where one paragraph (reference) ends and the next begins. It looks to it like every line is a new reference. All ¶s but the last in each reference must be manually removed from each reference - not difficult, but a bit time-consuming.
With your paper open in the word processor, click the Show/Hide (¶) button and look at your references to see their invisible characters.
OK. So how then does one get the "hang" in the first lines without these extra end-of-paragraphs, and the double-spacing? Actually, it's easy, and learning how to do it will greatly reduce your work in typing future reference lists.
Look at the left end of MS Word's ruler, and you will see the indent markers.
Point at the lower triangle - the one pointing up - with the mouse. Drag it right to the 1/2 inch mark. DO NOT point at the little rectangle under the lower triangle. Dragging it will drag both top and bottom pointers together. You only want to drag the bottom triangle. This tells Word to not indent the first line of the paragraph (reference), but to indent second and subsequent lines 1/2 inch.
After setting the indent markers, to make the word processor double space, select all of the references (if they are not already selected [highlighted]) or you haven't typed them in yet:
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Click the Format ... Paragraph ... menu choice
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In the box that appears, under Line spacing:, choose Double.
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Also make sure that Before and After under Spacings are set to 0.
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Click the OK button.
Having set the "hang" and spacing, just type each reference, pressing the <ENTER> key only when you have reached its end. The first line of each will not indent, while second and subsequent lines will automatically indent 1/2 inch. All of the reference list lines will now hang and double space as you type them.
I ALREADY GOOFED - HOW DO I REFORMAT
Don't worry, it's not too painful, though it does take some time. First, you have to remove all extra paragraph end, tab, and extra space (blank) characters. Click the word processor's ¶ "Show/Hidel" button and all the invisible characters - spaces (.), tabs (→), and paragraph ends (¶) - become visible. (To make these characters invisible again, click the ¶ button once more.) Remove all extra such characters. You'll need only one space between words, no tabs, and only one ¶ - at the end of the reference. These things are removed like any other character - select the character and press the <Delete> key.
The reference formatting may look a mess after you do this. Not to worry. That'll get taken care of by the following steps.
Next, select all of the references - not including the header word, "References". Point the mouse at the beginning of the first reference. Then hold down the mouse button and drag it straight down until it passes the last reference. All of the references are will be darkened (selected).
Then follow the instructions above for hanging the indents and setting double spacing.
That's it. All references should now be double-spaced and have hanging indents, and they will be scannable by CiteRefs.