In computing, the carriage return is the name of a computer character that directs a printer or screen display to return to the start of a line when printing or displaying text. The origin of its name is as you'd expect: it told a teletype that its print carriage (the cylinder that held the paper) should return to the beginning of a line. On some systems, such as older Macintoshes, it also creates a new line, like the line feed character.