1. Every language has ways of marking the end of a sentence or thought. Words are much less definite and more variable. In some languages the elements we’d consider words are integral parts of one ‘word’ that forms a sentence. In every language phonetic coarticulation melds ‘words’ but doesn’t cross a sentence boundary.
2. Written languages developed thought-ends gradually. In early Greek writing words were pushed together but sentence ends deserved a space. Various marks grew to denote full sentence ends and phrase ends.
3. Mechanical writing started when punctuation was fully developed, so typewriters and printing always included ways to make a space or show punctuation.
4. Because printing and typing were always aimed at rectangular book-style writing, the ends of lines needed special action. Line ends are NOT the same thing as sentence ends, and even words can be split by lines. In handset printing, one line is formed by filling the stick and planting the line in the chase. On a typewriter, one line is formed by pushing the carriage back and turning the platen to the next line.
5. Computer keyboards were modeled on typewriters or more specifically teletypes, so they continued the carriage return as a key. On keypunches the CR ejected the punch card and dropped a new card into position. When screen displays took over, the CR worked exactly like a typewriter, and at the ASCII level the carriage return and linefeed are still separate actions.
6. In recent years computers determine the rectangular layout, deciding for us where to break a line. We can still use CR to break a line, but the computer really doesn’t want us to do it that way.
7. CR has now gone all the way back to the original purpose of pauses or spaces. It denotes the end of a THOUGHT, not the end of a word or sentence or fixed-length line.
8. In most web apps the CR is a Take Action key, informing the computer or the website that we have decided to log in or buy an item or choose an answer on a quiz.
9. Increasingly, the Take Action key refuses to accept our commands without Authentication. We have to insert a password or Recaptcha before the computer will respond to our request.
10 = 1. Loop. We’ve returned to a primitive form of submission to authority, and often the Take Action key says SUBMIT. We can’t complete a sentence without permission from the Gods and the Priests, por favor, s’il vous plait, if it please the Court.
Polistra's Mill 