- Soft return
In
word processing and text-orientedmarkup language s the term soft return can mean a line break due toword wrap ping. Alternatively it can mean a stored line break that is not a paragraph break. For example, it is common to print postal addresses in a multiple-line format, but the several lines are understood to be a single paragraph. A soft return is contrasted with ahard return , which is usually acarriage return .Word processors
In the contemporary graphical word processors
Microsoft Word andOpenOffice.org , users are expected to type a carriage return (enter key ) between each paragraph. Formatting settings, such as first-line indentation or spacing between paragraphs, take effect where the carriage return marks the break. A non-paragraph line break, which is a soft return, is inserted using shift-enter or via the menus, is provided for cases when the text should start on a new line, but none of the other side effects of starting a new paragraph are desired.Markup languages
In text-oriented markup languages, a soft return is typically offered as a markup tag. For example, in
HTML there is a <br> tag that has the same purpose as the soft return in word processors described above.Unicode
The
Unicode character set provides a line separator character as well as a paragraph separator to represent the semantics of the soft return and hard return.:0x2028 LINE SEPARATOR : * may be used to represent this semantic unambiguously:0x2029 PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR: * may be used to represent this semantic unambiguously
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