Talk:Carriage return

What is a carriage, and why do I have to return it?

This question may perplex today's generation of computer-literate youth, just as the term horseless carriage may mystify some. How can you have a horse-drawn carriage with the horse pulling it?

• Oh, you mean a car!

  No, an Automobile. It moves by itself, with nothing pulling it.

• Dude, it's still a car (grin).

Well, it has to do with typewriters.

• You mean a word processor without a computer chip?

Er, exactly something like that. Now where was I? When you were typing, and the words reached the end of the line, you had to advance the platen

• The what?

(Wipes forehead feverishly) . . . The roller that the paper goes around when you make the keys hit the paper.

• Wait, let me google that. Is that something like a flat bed scanner? I have some old photographs that grandpa wants me to put on our website and ...

(gets a brain flash) You remember dot-matrix printers?

• You mean when dinosaurs roamed the earth? My social studies teacher has one on a shelf he used to use. But everyone uses laser now.

Will you listen to me?!

• (stunned silence)