How to Hang Quotes in Adobe InDesign

Updated on:

June 5, 2026

By:

Madhav Bhandari

Use this interactive demo to learn how to properly hang quotes within your Adobe InDesign documents.

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Here is a simple and quick guide on how to hang quotation marks in Adobe InDesign:

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To hang quotation marks in Adobe InDesign, go to the top menu and select 'Type' → 'Story.'
Highlight and Enable the Optical Margin Alignment option.
Notice how the quotation marks are adjusted outside the text frame.

📌 Why this matters

Hanging quotation marks creates optically aligned text edges that appear perfectly straight to the human eye. When quotes sit inside the text frame, they create visual indentations that make your text block look uneven and amateurish.

This technique is standard practice in professional typography because our brains perceive true alignment differently than mathematical alignment. Publishers, designers, and anyone creating polished documents rely on optical margin alignment to achieve that refined, publication-quality appearance that separates professional work from basic desktop publishing.

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