Grep is total awesomeness. It can be used to take much of the tedium out of typesetting, and allow the designer to concentrate more on the design. When making templates, it also makes the templates more fool-proof for the person who will actually be putting the templates to use.

That being said, I would have to totally disagree with those who think that soft returns are evil. Soft returns are a very powerful typesetting tool, and while yes, they can be used for evil by those who don't understand how they are properly used, they are not evil in and of themselves.

One of the most basic legitimate uses of a soft return is when your editor wants to change the wrap of a paragraph. A soft return is the most logical way to do this, without picking up the before/after space of the paragraph style, while still honoring the keep rules in the paragraph style.

One of the most basic legitimate uses of a soft return is when your editor wants to change the wrap of a paragraph. A soft return is the most logical way to do this, without picking up the before/after space of the paragraph style, while still honoring the keep rules in the paragraph style.

I wonder if this is actually the most logical way, as you claim, or if it's a matter of preference. I'd assume that nonbreaking spaces and the No Break attribute would be superior ways to affect the wrap of a paragraph, but I deliberately say "superior" instead of "most logical." In my case, No Break is the best, because both the nonbreaking space and the soft return would interfere with my translation memory tool. However, sometimes I use the NBSP and the soft return anyways, because it's the least-bad solution in a given circumstance.

So, if "logical" == "least bad" then I might be willing to agree. However, different people obviously have different ideas of what is "most logical."

Well put.

The soft line break inserts a new line as sure as a paragraph break (regular Hard Return) does. You wouldn't want to insert hard returns and change justification to "Full, all lines", just to avoid a single badly broken word -- even when the result looks the same as with a soft line break!

It's sort of the same as using a tab instead of a single space, somewhere in the middle of a running paragraph. Sure, it might work for that one occurrence, entirely indistinguishable from a "regular" space, but as soon as the text reflows due to editing, the tab will jump out in a most inconvenient way.