How to turn word wrap on or off in a notepad

Open the View menu in Jotter by Zaweba and click Word wrap. It switches between two ways of showing long lines: folded to fit the width of the window, or running on past the edge with a horizontal scroll bar. Click it again to switch back. Jotter remembers your choice, so it is the same the next time you open the program.

It is one setting for the whole window and it doesn't change your files at all, so there is no harm in flicking it on and off to see which suits what you are reading.

Wrapping on or off: the difference

With wrapping on, a long line is shown over as many screen lines as it needs to fit the window. You never scroll sideways, and paragraphs look like paragraphs. With wrapping off, each line in the file is exactly one line on screen, however long. Lines that are longer than the window run off the right edge, and a scroll bar lets you go across to see the rest.

Neither adds or removes line breaks in the file. The fold you see with wrapping on is drawn on screen only, so saving never splits a line.

Which to choose

For notes, drafts, pasted paragraphs and anything you read like prose, turn wrapping on. Text copied from a web page often arrives as very long lines, and Jotter pastes everything as plain text, so wrapping makes those long lines readable straight away.

For logs, tables and settings files, turn wrapping off. Here each line means something on its own, one event in a log or one setting in a file, and seeing it folded over two screen lines makes the file harder to follow. Off is also better when columns made with spaces or tabs need to line up.

A quick way to check a line

The status bar shows the line number of the cursor. With wrapping on, move the cursor down through what looks like several lines. If the line number stays the same, it is one long line folded on screen. That is a handy check when a program complains about something on a particular line and the file looks different from what you expected.

Wrapping and zoom

Zoom affects where lines fold. Ctrl and the mouse wheel, or Ctrl+Plus and Ctrl+Minus, change the text size from 50% to 400%. Bigger text with wrapping on gives shorter lines; bigger text with wrapping off pushes more of each line off the edge. When you're reading a wide log, zooming out a little with wrapping off can bring whole lines into view, and Ctrl+0 returns to 100%.

Remembered between runs

Because Jotter stores the setting, it stays as you left it. That is convenient, but it can catch you out if you switch tasks: open a log after writing notes and it will still be wrapped. If a file looks oddly jumbled or oddly wide, the View menu is the first place to look. Jotter by Zaweba keeps this to one simple switch, so putting it right takes a single click.