what is the difference between a soft return and a hard return?

Question

as in ms- word

Answer 1

When you use a typewriter, you press the RETURN, or ENTER, key at the end of each line. This signifies you are done with one line and ready to begin the next. In Word, however, you do not have to do this. When you set up your page margins, Word is programmed to know that when you reach the right margin your text should automatically wrap to the next line.

There may be times, however, when you want to end a line before you get to the right margin. In these instances, you can end a line in either of two ways. The first way is to press the ENTER key where you want the line to end. This results in a hard return being entered in the document. The other way is to press SHIFT+ENTER; this results in a soft return, sometimes called a newline character or line break, being entered in the document. Hard returns are used to signify the end of a paragraph, whereas soft returns simply signify the end of a line.

If you have changed your view options so you can see all nonprinting characters, then a hard return appears on your screen as a paragraph mark (a backwards P), and a soft return appears as a down-and-left pointing arrow.

Answer 2

A hard return is inserted when you press the Enter key to end a paragraph. It's also known as a Paragraph mark, and you can see it if you press the menu button that looks like this: ¶.
(Press it again to turn them off.)

A soft return is inserted when you press and hold the SHIFT key while pressing the Enter key. It's intended for enabling line breaks within a paragraph.

What the others are calling soft returns "when the machine automatically brings the text to the next line" is really "word wrap," and has nothing to do with returns, soft or hard.

Answer 3

Soft return = computer starts next line of document automatically

Hard return = the return (enter) key is pressed and a new line begins

Answer 4

soft return is when the machine automatically brings the text to the next line, so that the document stayed within the settings you have put in for the paper.

Hard return is when you actually hit the return key to end a sentance or create a paragraph.

Answer 5

A soft return tends to be softer than a hard return

Answer 6

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/soft_return.html
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