How to start something on a new line in Java SWING? <p>I am trying to set my JTextArea to take up the max horz length of the screen, so that the next thing, in this case a button, will start on a new line, but I have no clue how to do it. I have messed around by setting the size of the JTextArea to change from, say, 20 to 1000 but that does not do anything. </p> <p>How can I get my textarea to take up the entire first row and then have the next item that I add to begin on the following row? Here is what I have so far...</p> <pre><code>MyFrame(){//constructor super("Simple Calculator"); p = new JPanel(); grid = new GridLayout(4, 4, 3, 3); p.setLayout(grid); setSize(400, 500); setResizable(true); setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE); setUpTextScreen(); //create buttons for(int i = 0; i &lt; buttonValues.length; i++){ p.add(new JButton(buttonValues[i])); } add(p); setVisible(true); } private void setUpTextScreen() { textOnScreen = new JTextArea(7, 1000); textOnScreen.setText("0");//default textOnScreen.setEditable(false); p.add(textOnScreen); } </code></pre>