Yes, but what we are talking about here is where an editor wants to push a word to the next line. So, apart from using a soft return, your method would be to group that word together with the following word, via no break in the the paragraph/character or via a non-breaking space character.

So then, if a word was taken out of the paragraph somewhere before that, we could conceivably still be left with a nasty-looking break in the text.

An additional issue with using the non-breaking function is that it causes an override in the style, which is not desirable.

I do use non-breaking styles in GREP, for instance, to make sure that the a.m. does not get separated from a time, or to keep web addresses from breaking. But since these are written into GREP, they do not cause an override in the style.

You can do what you want, but I prefer the odds with the non-breaking space.

Indeed - the chances that it will appear in the middle of a line and not unduly alter the composition of the paragraph are much better than the odds that a soft return will, after a second edit, just happen to fall on the end of a line. It depends on a wide variety of factors, of course, but I'm in general quite pleased that I have so many ways to affect text composition. I use 'em all. Using only soft returns is something like using only tracking - you starve yourself of options, and the elegance of your layouts can suffer as a result. It doesn't necessarily suffer, of course, but the chances are good.

Claidh, I actually use the "No Break is an override" part to restore any messed-with paragraph to its "normal" state ...

I don't care what I did to a particular paragraph, or why, but I just may want all of its custom tracking and tweaking be gone because. Typically, if there were some pretty major editings in the text, this'd make all earlier tinkering obsolete, and possibly even harmful.

Your manually applied Soft Returns would stay behind ...

That may be the only valid use the soft return. In text that does not flow, whose line breaks are content sensitive so that InDesign would have no way to know where to break otherwise, and their use could save unecessary paragraph styles.