Skip to main content

Wordprocessing Text

Line Breaks, Symbols, and Other Special Content

Line breaks, carriage returns, tabs, special characters and other special content may appear as elements within text runs (<w:r> </w:r>) rather than within text elements (<t> </t>).

Elements:​

ElementDescription
brSee Breaks. Reference: ECMA-376, 3rd Edition (June, 2011), Fundamentals and Markup Language Reference § 17.3.3.1.
crSpecifies that a carriage return (Unicode character 000D) should be inserted. It is equivalent to a break with null type and clear attributes (). <w:r><w:t>This is another</w:t></w:r><w:r><w:br/><w:t xml:space="preserve"> simple sentence.</w:t></w:r>
symSee Symbols. Reference: ECMA-376, 3rd Edition (June, 2011), Fundamentals and Markup Language Reference § 17.3.3.30.
tabA tab character is inserted with the tab element: . The tab will advance to the nearest multiple of the defaultTabStop element (within settings.xml) width value unless there is a custom tab stop further along, in which case it will advance to that custom tab. Custom tab stops are defined using the tabs element. Reference: ECMA-376, 3rd Edition (June, 2011), Fundamentals and Markup Language Reference § 17.3.3.32.
noBreakHyphenA non-breaking hyphen may be added so that the line will not break at the hyphen as it might if a hyphen-minus character (U+00D2) were used. Reference: ECMA-376, 3rd Edition (June, 2011), Fundamentals and Markup Language Reference § 17.3.3.18. <w:r> <w:t>Each citizen has a unique social security number of the form "999</w:t> </w:r> <w:r> <w:noBreakHyphen/> </w:r> <w:r> <w:t>99</w:t> </w:r> <w:r> <w:noBreakHyphen/> </w:r> <w:r> <w:t>9999."</w:t> </w:r> Word 2007 Example:
softHyphenAn optional hyphen character may be added which may appear as a regular hyphen when needed to break the line, but which otherwise has a width of zero. It is typically used to mark locations where a word can be hyphenated without causing the hyphen to be displayed unnecessarily. Reference: ECMA-376, 3rd Edition (June, 2011), Fundamentals and Markup Language Reference § 17.3.3.29. <w:r> <w:t>This sentence needs to be just long enough so as to cause some sort of line break</w:t> </w:r> <w:r> <w:softHyphen/> </w:r> <w:r> <w:t>ing.</w:t> </w:r> Word 2007 Example: