May I ask why you find more convenient to press ^M for a line return instead of the line return key?

As someone else who also uses ^M for line return here's my reason.

I have the Caps key mapped to control, so ^M is 2 small finger movements as opposed to reaching for the return key which means either moving my (weak in my case) right wrist or moving my whole right forearm. It's a small movement to the return key but I find eliminating it really helps to reduce strain related pain when typing.

I also use ^H for backspace and ^I for tab for similar reasons. This also keeps my fingers on the home row.

I'm not proud of this, but I sometimes bounce between ^N (next-line in emacs) and ^I (tab character, bound to various thing in different emacs modes) to re-indent a region. I usually only do this for <10 lines. More than that and I go look up the function that does it 'right'.

Why not proud? Sounds fast and efficient. I didn't save the move of the hand to the tab key, but I will now. Thanks.