Hard and Soft Newlines
In formatted text, Emacs distinguishes between two different kinds of
newlines, hard newlines and soft newlines.
Hard newlines are used to separate paragraphs, or items in a list, or
anywhere that there should always be a line break regardless of the
margins. The <RET> command (newline) and C-o
(open-line) insert hard newlines.
Soft newlines are used to make text fit between the margins. All the
fill commands, including Auto Fill, insert soft newlines--and they
delete only soft newlines.
Although hard and soft newlines look the same, it is important to bear
the difference in mind. Do not use <RET> to break lines in the
middle of filled paragraphs, or else you will get hard newlines that are
barriers to further filling. Instead, let Auto Fill mode break lines,
so that if the text or the margins change, Emacs can refill the lines
properly. See Auto Fill.
On the other hand, in tables and lists, where the lines should always
remain as you type them, you can use <RET> to end lines. For these
lines, you may also want to set the justification style to
unfilled. See Format Justification.
|
