Diff granularity guide
Line diff vs word diff: when each comparison helps
Line-level comparison answers “which rows changed?” Word-level detail answers “which words inside this changed row changed?” Private Text Compare combines those ideas in one presentation rather than exposing separate Line mode and Word mode switches.
Line-level context vs word-level detail
Useful for understanding structure, alignment, additions and removals across the two versions.
Useful when a sentence is mostly the same but one or two words were edited.
There is no user-facing “Line mode / Word mode” selector. The word detail appears inside rows that the line-level comparison identifies as changed.
A sentence can be changed while most words stay the same
Original: The project review starts on Tuesday at 10 AM.
Changed: The project review starts on Wednesday at 11 AM.
The project review starts on Tuesday Wednesday at 10 11 AM.
The whole row is “changed” because the two aligned lines are not identical. The inline highlights show that most of the sentence stayed unchanged while two values were replaced.
When line structure matters most
- Code snippets: see which source lines were added, removed or modified. The tool is not source-code-aware and does not parse a programming language.
- Configuration: spot a changed setting line or inserted entry without implying semantic understanding of the config format.
- Lists: identify inserted, removed or edited list rows.
- Logs: compare line-oriented outputs when the text is small enough to paste and review.
- Paragraph boundaries: a line break can affect alignment, so structure can be part of the difference.
When inline word detail is most useful
For prose, the important question is often not just that a sentence changed, but how. Inline word highlights help with writing revisions, email edits, policy wording, reports and other text where a small replacement can change the meaning of a sentence.
Because word detail is nested inside a changed row, you keep the surrounding line context instead of seeing isolated tokens with no indication of where they came from.
Changed lines are different from whole added or removed lines
A changed row represents aligned content that differs and can therefore show inline removed and added words. A whole added line exists only in the right-hand Changed version. A whole removed line existed in the left-hand Original version but not the revised one.
That distinction is why the direction of comparison still matters even when you care mainly about word detail.
Case and surrounding whitespace can change what counts as different
Ignore case can make case-only edits compare as unchanged. Ignore surrounding whitespace ignores leading and trailing whitespace on each line, not arbitrary whitespace inside the line. Use the options only when those differences are irrelevant to the task you are reviewing.