This is IDL's way to put those carriage return and newline characters in a string: IDL> mystring = "Enter" + string(13b) + string(10b) + "value" ; 13B and 10B are ASCII char ID's for carriage return and newline. IDL> print, mystring Enter value I was surprised to see that this CAN work effectively in an IDL prompt, if the carriage return/newline is put at the end of the prompt. Thus: IDL> READ, PROMPT="Enter value" + string(13b) + string(10b), A on IDL for Windows at least will produce the following in the IDL output log, if the user's entry is '10': Enter value 10 James Jones