Carriage return with echo command

I was practicing echo command with option \r (carriage return) as below. echo -e "This is \r my college" output: my college but when I add one more word before \r as below echo -e "This is the \r my college" Then it gives me output like: my college the Another example echo -e "This is \r valid data" valid data echo -e "This is not a \r valid data" valid data a So, I wanted to know that what is the actual purpose of carriage return here?