Formatting a list with varying (negative) first line indents

[Julius B.]

Hello. I'm working on a school textbook that has a vocabulary section in each lesson. I'd like to format each item on the list to have the definitions be separated with a hyphen but with the rest of the lines of the body text aligned separately from the vocabulary term. To do this, my initial plan is to set the first line indent to a negative value up until the hyphen character. However, since the terms have varying lengths, it would be impossible to define one style for it, unless I ignore that and just do everything manually. Unless, there is a possible way to do it? If so, may I please ask how it is done?

[Peter Spier · Accepted solution]

Personally, I think varried indents is going to be visually odd and inappropriate, but you can accomplish this with no left indent and no negative indent specified and add an "Indent to Here" special character after your hyphen.

[Julius B.]

I didn't know such a feature exists! Thank you so much, this is exactly what I've been looking for.

[Eugene Tyson]

@Peter Spier has hit the nail on the head once again! 

If you need help setting it up let us know. Or if there's something else you meant can you please supply an example image or file. 

But Peter's solution should work for you.