Echo newline in Bash prints literal \n

You could use printf instead:

printf "hello\nworld\n"

printf has more consistent behavior than echo. The behavior of echo varies greatly between different versions.

Make sure you are in Bash.

$ echo $0
bash

All these four ways work for me:

echo -e "Hello\nworld"
echo -e 'Hello\nworld'
echo Hello$'\n'world
echo Hello ; echo world

echo $'hello\nworld'

prints

hello
world

$'' strings use ANSI C Quoting:

Words of the form $'string' are treated specially. The word expands to string, with backslash-escaped characters replaced as specified by the ANSI C standard.

You could always do echo "".

For example,

echo "Hello,"
echo ""
echo "World!"

In the off chance that someone finds themselves beating their head against the wall trying to figure out why a coworker's script won't print newlines, look out for this:

#!/bin/bash
function GET_RECORDS()
{
   echo -e "starting\n the process";
}

echo $(GET_RECORDS);

As in the above, the actual running of the method may itself be wrapped in an echo which supersedes any echos that may be in the method itself. Obviously I watered this down for brevity. It was not so easy to spot!

You can then inform your comrades that a better way to execute functions would be like so:

#!/bin/bash
function GET_RECORDS()
{
   echo -e "starting\n the process";
}

GET_RECORDS;