Soft return ?

[Steve Fairbairn]

Is there any such thing as a "soft return" in ID? I need a line break without creating a new paragraph but can't find "soft return" in any of the menus. What's the trick?

[Jongware · Accepted solution]

InDesign calls it a "Soft Line Break" -- Shift+Enter.

Use with extreme discretion. If you need a new paragraph, but without indenting/spacing above/below of the current one, create a new paragraph style. If you need to keep two or more words together, use non-breaking spaces or the No Break text attribute. If you want to manually tailor hyphenation/line breaks, use the Single-line Composer instead of the Paragraph Composer, in combination with No Break and/or hard spaces.

[Post-Edit:] ID also offers a
i Discretionary Line Break,
which sort-of combines a few functions. It marks a good line breaking position inside a word
i without
showing a hyphen when broken. Great for URLs.

[Steve Fairbairn]

Thanks, found it. What I was looking for is called Type : Insert Break Character : Forced Line Break (Shift+Return).

[Bob_Bringhurst_-_Adobe]

Forced Line Break and other break characters are listed here:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/InDesign/6.0/WSa285fff53dea4f8617383751001ea8cb3f-6f66a.html

[Jongware]

I reckoned it worthwhile to add the advice. I never use a soft return.

i "Chorus.
What, never?

i Captain.
No, never!

i Chorus.
What, never?

i Captain.
Hardly ever!"

[Al_Ferrari]

Captain?

[_Dave_Saunders_]

Gilbert & Sullivan: HMS Pinafore

Dave

[Al_Ferrari]

<G><br /><br />Thanks Dave. Good to have a context for that.<br /><br />Al

[Jongware]

:-D

I was just waiting for an opportunity to insert that snippet.

[Gavin_Anderson]

I wrote a tribute parody of the Modern Major General bit from Pirates of Penzance for my father's funeral. A little by of G&S never hurt nobody 😉

[_Frozen_Tundra_]

I always appreciate an obscure reference. Here is a
little background if anyone is interested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.M.S._Pinafore

[Guest]

Soft returns have their place.

It's when people overuse them and use them for things like creating extra space between paragraphs when you run into trouble.

[Steve Fairbairn]

Like when some people enter endless tabs to produce a line break. Reckon it must be a hangover from typewriter days. I don´t know how often I have reprimanded my wife for doing it 🙂 But soft returns shouldn't be a problem with professionals who know what they're doing. basically it's a question of keeping your typography squeaky clean.

And by the way, long live Gilbert and Sullivan - totally brilliant! I thought they were thoroughly "out" and am very surprised that anyone still remembers them :-)

[_Mal_Ross_]

I'm a bit of a soft line-break phobic myself. I've never understood what they're actually *meant* for; surely if you're changing topic, you start a new paragraph? Otherwise, just carry on with the current one, without need for a line break of any kind... right? It's one of those things that really bugs me when I see my colleagues doing it.

Can anyone point me in the direction of some guidelines regarding the use of soft line breaks? I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Mal.

[_Mal_Ross_]

Actually, I've misused the term soft return. I'd better explain. :)

I'm a software developer, not a technical writer or anything like that. The passages of text I write are plain-text prompts, with no inherent concept of paragraphs. Instead, I talk about single carriage returns as soft returns and double carriage returns as paragraph breaks. Hope that's a bit clearer.

What riles me is when I see colleagues writing such messages with some sentences separated by single returns and others separated by double returns. The former just looks a mess to my eye, as the semantics of the single return are unclear in the presence of a more recognisable, double-return paragraph break. Plus, the lack of soothing whitespace in single-returned paragraphs is detrimental to readability, IMHO.

This is now becoming a long shot, but can anyone point me to guidelines that would cover this kind of... well, abomination? :)

[Vernox]

Oh my, where to start ;-)

Mal, I don't think typography applies to what you do, so what should govern your work is what makes it most functionally legible. Just as an example, double carriage returns to add paragraph spacing is (to be mild) frowned upon in typesetting. Which does not mean it is wrong for you to do it, as you are not typesetting. Just keep doing what you are doing and be happy.

If you want to jump into the fine art of typography, however, you can't go wrong by finding yourself a copy of Bringhurst's "The Elements of Typographic Style" and giving it a read. There are plenty of other tomes as well, but that one in particular is considered authoritative.

Yours
Vern

[NTC Ann]

Thank you for asking about soft returns!!!!! There is nothing like getting a document from someone and needing to create a new package and instead of using soft returns (shift/return) or just letting the text wrap, the person has used all hard returns or used spaces instead of tabs to align things or used a whole bunch of spaces to move text to the next line. Or getting text that is not linked where every column or every page is it's own text block instead of one continuous text block for the document. Or using extra paragraph returns instead of using space before or space after to allow for extra room in between paragraphs.

Please do use them.... it makes life a lot easier for others if they have to work off your document. Thank you.

[NTC Ann]

Actual guidelines? Here are a couple suggestions that might help.

If you want to bring your line of text to the next line without a hard return such as if you have your document set up so that say you have 1p or 1" in between paragraphs and you don't want to have that 1p or 1" space before (or space after) your next line but you want to just continue your text as one block. Or if your paragraph has an awkward rag to one side (say one line really sticks out far and you want to bring a word to the next line so the one side looks better... soft return).

Or if you have a lot of hyphens and you don't want them and you've kerned and it hasn't solved the hyphen problem, then you can use a soft return to put the beginning part of the word on the next line. (Personally I try to avoid all hyphens when ever possible.)

Or if when you've used a clipping path on an object and the text just doesn't sit right and you need to adjust the words in a paragraph so they look better... you can use the soft return in between words so that the rag on that one side looks more attractive.

If you want to line up text under an area on the left where the text doesn't go all the way to the right in a box. Say you have the text 3" in from the right side of the text box but for some reason, you are not using the indent tool.

And say you have a bullet and a space on the L... and then when you run the text to line #2 and below... you want the text to line up under the beginning of the first work instead of under the bullet at the beginning.... never use spaces to line up anything please... use tabs or in this case, after you have soft returned at the end of that 1st line... click in front of the first word after the space and bullet and hit "command and \"... then the text will line up for you under where you want it to line up. But it won't do that if you have done a hard return.

I hope I am clear on explaining some of these uses.

[BobLevine]

No no no!

Soft returns should NEVER be used in a paragraph in InDesign especially
if the paragraph composer is on. Use a no break to keep words together.

Bob

[Kath-H]

>And say you have a bullet and a space on the L... and then when you run the text to line #2 and below... you want the text to line up under the beginning of the first work instead of under the bullet at the beginning.

Isn't that what hanging indents are for?

[Michael_Gianino]

Astronauts love soft returns.

[Nini_Tjader]

I'm with Kath on this - hanging indents is for that.

[Steve Fairbairn]

The whole point of a soft return (or forced line break) is to move a word down into the next line without creating a new paragraph.
This usually happens if a column of text is aligned left and the right edge is unnecessarily ragged. (Old-school typographers often call this "ragged right" instead of aligned left.) You might have a short word like "in" or "of" that would look better in the next line rather than hanging out at the right end.
Say your paragraph has a first line indent; a soft return will let you carry on in the same paragraph, whereas if you enter a ordinary carriage return you will get an indent where you don't want it.

I disagree with NTC Ann when she talks about using tabs for the front edges of bulleted lists. It's much better to use a combination of paragraph indent and minus value first line indent and save it as a paragraph style. Tabs can be a nuisance if you need to re-flow text.

[Jongware]

>You might have a short word like "in" or "of" that would look better in the next line rather than hanging out at the right end. Say your paragraph has a first line indent; a soft return will let you carry on in the same paragraph, whereas if you enter a ordinary carriage return you will get an indent where you don't want it.

But when­ever the text is re-formatted (due to text editing, usually), the soft return will
i keep on break­ing
at that exact point. In this case I prefer to either insert a non-break­ing space between the small word and the next one, or select the small word and (part of) the next word and apply 'No Break'.

You might argue "yeah but that's about the same, innit?" since these texts will not ever be brokenjust as with a Soft Return. It's not the same: if the text re-runs, the fix becomes un­notice­able, and when­ever it re-runs
i again
and the joined words come near the mar­gins, they'll keep on stick­ing to­gether. Just the way you want.

[Laubender]

Hi @sobia27635800quii ,

just open a new thread and decribe what you are looking for.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )