I learned to type on a manual typewriter, and it is my recollection that when you released the carriage, it always fell back into the spaces allocated for letters.
There was no way to release the carriage into a position between letters. How could there be? It must fall into a spot allocated by the gear teeth on the carriage.
You hit the carriage release and it lets you slide the carriage, so you can type things in forms. Mine was an electric typewriter and I got rid of it thirty years ago, but I don’t think that it was in any way unique.