For APA style formatting in the references section, I need the first line to left aligned and the second line to be indented. This can be done in Google Docs.

Select Location

Possibly you only want one part of the document to have a hanging indent. If you highlight a whole section of text the formatting will be applied to the entire section. If I have not started typing my references section I will press enter several times and highlight the section. This provides with a whole section of my document that I can type my references in and have a hanging indent automatically applied.

Ruler

In the ruler above the text are a blue line and triangle. The top line is the indent marker for the first line. The triangle below it is the indent marker for the subsequent lines. By default there is no indents so they are aligned with the left margin. You want to move the triangle on the bottom to the half inch mark.

This will bring the first line indent with it. You will have to manually move the first line indent marker back to the edge of the margin.