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 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.
Now look at your keyboard and find the numerical keypad. The Enter key way on the right side is a Column Break. If you have a text frame divided into columns, (Object > Text Frame Options) the cursor will go to the top of the next column. If you have threaded text frames, this will move your cursor and any text that was after your cursor out of the active text frame, and your cursor will appear in the next 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 next post 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!