(on a typewriter) the key or mechanism that causes the next character typed to appear at the left margin and on a new line.
2.
Computers. the symbol, command, or key (return) that causes the printer to be positioned or the cursor to be displayed at the left margin.
Examples from the web for carriage return
Also remove the file's last two lines, which are a caret and a carriage return.
The record delimiter must consist of two characters and those two characters must be carriage return and line feed.
The record delimiter must consist of two characters, the carriage return and line feed.
No punctuation is used in the records and each record ends with a carriage return and line feed.
carriage return in Technology
character (CR, Control-M, ASCII 13) The character which causes the cursor to move to the left margin, often used with line feed to start a new line of output. Encoded in C and Unix as "\r". (1996-06-24)