Representing newline with a character placed "inline"

Question

Background

Hi all, i'm developing a diary application where the user adds several short entries (on a couple of lines perhaps) rather than adding entries for an entire day

For layout and look reasons i'd like these entries to be without newlines inside

Question

When pasting a text into an entry and the text which is pasted contains newlines, i'd like to find a way to represent the newlines with a visual character rather than going to the next line. How can i do this in a nice way?

What i've considered so far

One option is to choose a character like this one. Another idea is to use a pipe with a space before and after " | "

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Grateful for help with this!

Answer 1

The separating character instead of new line is the same as long as the character is easily recognizable. The pipe is ok if it's well visible in the used font. I think you must use quite thick font for just this one character.

You probably should give options. People are so used to make a new line when they want a new starting point which should be seen easily. So, new lines at will must be available as one of the options.

This is an example of something I consider to be a well visible separator:

The fj can be replaced with record number or identifier letter. This makes references possible in the text. The minus is that also the first line needs some identifier.

There's still one separation possiblity: text color. It doesn't need extra space.

You must test, if it can be used in your system. Or is it already reserved for something else?

Answer 2

I think your choice is absolutely fine. In software such as LibreOffice Writer, a similar character is used in the formatting marks view for a newline. A pilcrow is usually reserved for new paragraph. In LibreOffice these formatting marks are coloured blue so that they stand out.

Screen shot of LibreOffice Writer formatting marks