Inspiring

Answered

Soft return ?

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
February 26, 2009
35 replies
93798 views

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?

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Correct answer Jongware

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.

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi @sobia27635800quii ,

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

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

Eternal Warrior

Inspiring

The only time I have had to use a soft return or forced line break was on a flyer where I needed to control bulleted Headers and Paragraphs on a tiny portion of an A5 page where I often needed to change the bulleted Paragraph Text and the Bullet Headings needed to stay the same without it messing up any of the typography or other formatting drastically.

It was, in my opinion, at least 50% easier in that scenario to use a forced line break to keep the content looking as i wanted than any other method suggested above. Additionally it meant that I could use a Nested Style to alter the bulleted Headers style without ever having much work if i needed to edit the actual text.

I agree that soft returns/forced line breaks should be avoided or used sparingly wherever possible but sometimes they can be used for good reasons.

robertk41121117

Participant

Yes I am using nasty styles as well, but in a novel sometimes we must correct the machine work.

You know it not always 0 and 1

And I forgot to write in the previous post, I used align left , but it is important.

robertk41121117

Participant

I have a question too:

How can I make a soft-return (Shift+Return) whitout formatting the paragraph before?

For example I have a "hanging" A at the end of the line, I want to start a new line, but I don't want to let the line be shorter.

A

ashleycreighton

Participant

I've found another use for the soft return, and I'm kind of new at this but I wanted to throw it in the discussion:

When doing listings, for example address listings, and the whole address block needs to stay together... Maybe some of the addresses have 5 lines and some have 4 (ruling out the practicality/uniformity of a table), and you want to employ the "keep" paragraph option, but each line of the address block starts a new paragraph. All the "keep" options apply only to lines within one paragraph - therefore, soft returning after each line within the block will keep the whole address block in one paragraph and enable the "keep" functionality.

I was wary to use soft returns for any reason, but I could not find another way to do this. I'm beginning to appreciate the distinct usefulness of soft returns.

--

(website link removed)

music to make you feel better about being depressed

A

Anonymous

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.

M

Michael_Gianino

Inspiring

Why didn't you just learn it like the rest of usfrom Sideshow Bob?

claidheamdanns

Participating Frequently

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.

BobLevine

Community Expert

Not correct if you have the paragraph composer in use. A soft return could easily rewrap the entire paragraph and make it look like crap.

Bob

Jongware

Community Expert

>..basic cultural knowledge..

"Parseltongue" seems to be added to basic vocabulary.

Oh -- and my introduction to "Pinafore" was, in fact, through "Star Trek -- Insurrection". But it roused my curiosity enough to delve a bit deeper.

_

_Olav_Kvern_

Known Participant

Frozen Tundra wrote: "I always appreciate an obscure reference."

Wait..."H.M.S. Pinafore" is obscure...? It's basic cultural knowledge, like knowing how to pronounce "pwn3d" or "Fifty Cent".

If W.S. Gilbert, the greatest writer of comic verse in English, is "obscure," then what in the world has become of us?:-)

Thanks,

Ole

A

Anonymous

I think I prefer the character attribute though the difference may be nominal. It seems a bit easier to apply because your selection can include part of the word, and it is easier to get rid of: simply click Clear Overrides. Granted this is only safe if you're in the (good) habit of using character styles instead of local formatting.

Having a paragraph style that applies No Break could be disconcerting but doesn't seem that likely. Though I should add that I have found occasion to use just such paragraph styles (it has to do with using an Align To Character tab within one character width of the right margin) and that has given me some headaches when I was careless with Based On.

> That is all parseltongue to me

For me as well and that's been keeping me from trying to learn it. There is book by Peter Kahrel that has been recommended in this forum.

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596156008/?CMP=AFC-ak_book&ATT=GREP+in+InDesign+CS3%2FCS4

MT.Freelance

Inspiring

Thanks Harbs.

That is all parseltongue to me as I am a total neophyte when it comes to GREP. I've only recently opened the door to what is CS4 at home (being on ID2 prior to that). Although it was ordered at work, it has not yet arrived, so I remain on CS2.

BUT, I will plug it in and give it a go.

What is the difference in the syntax used?

Or, perhaps more importantly, what is a good printed or online resource for all things GREP?

MT.Freelance

Inspiring

Non Breaking Space does show up with hidden characters visible.

It is not a character attribute that can be inherited by accident (which can result in overset text if a whole paragraph acquires the attribute, for instance) as with the no-break character attribute.

Now, if only there was a Discretionary Non-Breaking Space setting that would apply a non-breaking space before the last word of a paragraph. I wonder if a GREP style would cover that?

-mt

Harbs.

Legend

Michael_Trout@adobeforums.com wrote:
> I wonder if a GREP style would cover that?
>

Yes:

"\s\S+\s?$"

(or "\S+\s\S+\s?$" depending on what you want...)

--
Harbs
http://www.in-tools.com

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