And Shift+Erase will hide the lines. There is a significan difference between the two however; with hidden lines, the faces remain separate while with softening, they will be "joined" to form a (curved) surface. On faces divided with hidden lines only, you can still access texture positioning, PushPull and all the stuff that can only be applied on single faces while to do this on smoothed surfaces, you will always turn on hidden geometry first. (Very briefly...) The best would still be what both me and Anssi suggested; start over and care for all the faces being created of single faces where you need not hide/soften edges. Much easier to work with.