Several conventions are used throughout jEdit's user interface and this manual. They will be described here.

When a menu item selection is being described, the top level menu is listed first, followed by successive levels of submenus, finally followed by the menu item itself. All menu components are separated by greater-than symbols (“>”). For example, View>Scrolling>Scroll to Current Line refers to the Scroll to Current Line command contained in the Scrolling submenu of the View menu.

As with many other applications, menu items that end with ellipsis (...) display dialog boxes or windows when invoked.

Many jEdit commands can be also be invoked using keystrokes. This speeds up editing by letting you keep your hands on the keyboard. Not all commands with keyboard shortcuts are accessible with one key stroke; for example, the keyboard shortcut for Scroll to Current Line is Control-E Control-J. That is, you must first press Control-E, followed by Control-J.

In many dialog boxes, the default button (it has a heavy outline, or a special border, depending on the current Swing look and feel) can be activated by pressing Enter. Similarly, pressing Escape will usually close a dialog box.

Finally, some user interface elements (menus, menu items, buttons) have a certain letter in their label underlined. Pressing this letter in combination with the Alt key activates the associated user interface widget.