The Enter and Return Keys on an extended keyboard are not the same.
I remember my first job out of college. I was a designer (desktop publisher) at a local printer, using QuarkXPress – probably 3.0 or 3.3. I was making a brochure, and my text kept disappearing after I hit Enter. I was getting frustrated and kept closing my document without saving to start over. I finally realized I was hitting the “Wrong” Enter key.
The two keys are not the same.The Enter (win) or Return (mac) key located next to the quote key and above the shift key, moves your cursor to the next line, and also makes a hard paragraph return.
If you want to keep the text all in one paragraph, but move the text to the next line – a manual way to keep text together so that 123 Main St all stays on one line for example, you can hold Shift and hit Return. This will move the text to the next line, but NOT make another paragraph.
A Mac keyboard with Return Key in the middle and the Enter Key to the right highlighted
Now look at your keyboard and find the numerical keypad. It’s all the way on the right side. This Enter key way on the right side is a Page or Column Break. If you have a text frame divided into columns, (Object > Text Frame Options) the cursor will jump to the top of the next column.
If you have threaded text frames, hitting the Enter key will move your cursor and any text that was after the cursor out of the active text frame, and will appear in the next threaded frame. If you don’t have another frame threaded, you’ll see a little red “+” icon at the bottom right side of your text frame, and your text “disappears”.
To bring back the disappearing text, either go into Story Editor, (Edit > Edit in Story Editor) select and remove the “Enter” or use your Right Delete key when your cursor is at the end of the visible text. (See the post about two delete keys for more info on delete keys).
On a laptop, or the short Mac keyboard which doesn’t have the numerical keypad, you’ll find a “fn” key on the left of your keyboard. Hold that and the Return key, and you’ll put in a Column Break just like the Numerical Enter key.
Move your text to the next line or next column or the next frame with confidence…now you know!