See the difference in the indentations? In the fourth example, which is rendered in a typewriter-style fixed-width font, five spaces equals roughly a half-inch of blank space. As you can see on your screen right now, a snippet of text occupies different volumes of space when it’s kerned. As a result, different fonts of the same size will display quite differently on the page. One of the innovations of word processing software is kerning, which fits wide and narrow letters together more naturally.

That’s because typewriters used fixed-width fonts, meaning that every character-whether a narrow letter like a capital I or a wide letter like a capital W-occupies the exact same space on the typed page. Back in the days of typewriters, this was sound advice five blank spaces would pretty reliably produce a half-inch indentation. You may have been taught to indent each paragraph by hitting the spacebar five times.

Most academic writing styles, as well as the standard manuscript formats used for books and magazine articles, call for the first line of each new paragraph to be indented that is, the first line starts with a half-inch or so of blank space, while the type on the second and all subsequent lines starts flush up against the left-hand margin. Get your free sample back in 3 to 6 hours!

A first line indent in word 2016