Google Docs – How to Remove Automatic Negative Indent

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When I write a paragraph in Google Documents, they get a very distinctive negative indent on the first line. I don't want that. I want my paragraphs to have no indent at all.

How do I get that?

Here is a screenshot showing the automatic negative indent:
enter image description here

Best Answer

This was tough to find.

First, make sure you have "Show ruler" checked under the View menu.

Then, in the ruler at the top of your document, I bet you see something like this:

screen shot with hanging indent

The little blue rectangle has the tooltip "First line indent" while the little blue triangle says "Left indent". In other words, the first line of your paragraph lines up with the rectangle, while the rest lines up with the triangle. To remove this you need to line them up, like so:

screen shot - lined up indent

Each paragraph appears to have its own setting, so you'll probably have to select all (or most) of your text and make the change to apply it more universally.

I'm guessing that you inadvertently moved this when first creating the document.

More information on the Page setup support page.

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