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?

[ashleycreighton]

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.

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[Guest]

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.

[claidheamdanns]

Yes, we use soft returns for that exact purpose all the time.

[robertk41121117]

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.

[Eternal Warrior]

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]

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.