‘Implicit CR in every LF’

PuTTY

4.3.3 ‘Implicit CR in every LF’

Most servers send two control characters, CR and LF, to start a new line of the screen. The CR character makes the cursor return to the left-hand side of the screen. The LF character makes the cursor move one line down (and might make the screen scroll).

Some servers only send LF, and expect the terminal to move the cursor over to the left automatically. If you come across a server that does this, you will see a stepped effect on the screen, like this:

First line of text
                  Second line
                             Third line

If this happens to you, try enabling the ‘Implicit CR in every LF’ option, and things might go back to normal:

First line of text
Second line
Third line