The best way to think of shortcodes is by thinking that it is a function call. And when this function is called, it renders what you asked.
For example, assume the following is the content of your post or page:
Some text here
[my_short_code]
And more text here
Now, if you do not implement the shortcode hook, the above content will be displayed as shown above.
However, in your plugin functions file (or theme, but I think shortcodes are likely part of a plugin), if you add the following hook
add_shortcode('my_short_code', 'render_my_short_code);
function render_my_short_code () {
?>
Yay
<?php
}
Then the output of your post, or your page, will be as such:
Some text here
Yay
And more text here
As you can see, when you added the shortcode hook, the shortcode is now acting as a function that renders whatever you like (The hook finds the shortcode by name, and replaces it with the content of the function attached to the hook). So, it is really up to you how you use it.
More details about shortcodes here: https://codex.wordpress.org/Shortcode
Hope this helps.