diff --git a/Lib/test/test_traceback.py b/Lib/test/test_traceback.py
index 8076be8..d7b183a 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_traceback.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_traceback.py
@@ -35,6 +35,9 @@
     def syntax_error_bad_indentation(self):
         compile("def spam():\n  print 1\n print 2", "?", "exec")
 
+    def syntax_error_bad_indentation2(self):
+        compile(" print(2)", "?", "exec")
+
     def test_caret(self):
         err = self.get_exception_format(self.syntax_error_with_caret,
                                         SyntaxError)
@@ -111,6 +114,13 @@
                 os.unlink(os.path.join(testdir, f))
             os.rmdir(testdir)
 
+        err = self.get_exception_format(self.syntax_error_bad_indentation2,
+                                        IndentationError)
+        self.assertEqual(len(err), 4)
+        self.assertEqual(err[1].strip(), "print(2)")
+        self.assertIn("^", err[2])
+        self.assertEqual(err[1].find("p"), err[2].find("^"))
+
     def test_base_exception(self):
         # Test that exceptions derived from BaseException are formatted right
         e = KeyboardInterrupt()
diff --git a/Lib/traceback.py b/Lib/traceback.py
index 5ad2838..0a3dd11 100644
--- a/Lib/traceback.py
+++ b/Lib/traceback.py
@@ -189,11 +189,12 @@
         if badline is not None:
             lines.append('    %s\n' % badline.strip())
             if offset is not None:
-                caretspace = badline.rstrip('\n')[:offset].lstrip()
+                caretspace = badline.rstrip('\n')
+                offset = min(len(caretspace), offset) - 1
+                caretspace = caretspace[:offset].lstrip()
                 # non-space whitespace (likes tabs) must be kept for alignment
                 caretspace = ((c.isspace() and c or ' ') for c in caretspace)
-                # only three spaces to account for offset1 == pos 0
-                lines.append('   %s^\n' % ''.join(caretspace))
+                lines.append('    %s^\n' % ''.join(caretspace))
         value = msg
 
     lines.append(_format_final_exc_line(stype, value))
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 26bd485..35846b5 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -9,6 +9,9 @@
 Core and Builtins
 -----------------
 
+- Issue #17825: Cursor "^" is correctly positioned for SyntaxError and
+  IndentationError.
+
 - Issue #19081: When a zipimport .zip file in sys.path being imported from
   is modified during the lifetime of the Python process after zipimport has
   already cached the zip's table of contents we detect this and recover