A Swing frequently asked question is whether Swing supports labels that display multiple lines of text, and the answer is both yes and no. Swing labels are instances of the JLabel class, and JLabel makes no provision for displaying multiple lines of text; therefore in that respect, the answer is no.

On the other hand, Swing includes components, such as JTextArea and JEditorPane, that are quite proficient at displaying multiple lines of text. It seems as though there should be a way to reuse the functionality provided by a text component;for example, an instance of JTextArea used as a multi-line label component. The problem with using a text area to implement a multi-line label is that a text area looks and feels like a text area instead of a label.