While playing with jqGrid, I have no idea why word wrapping a line is so difficult to do. Here is a few steps to enable word wrapping in the cells.

1. Open up ui.jqgrid.css
2. Search for .ui-jqgrid tr.jqgrow td
3. Change “white-space: pre;” to “white-space: normal;”

You are done! 😉

Ref: http://2centtech.blogspot.com/2009/12/jqgrid-header-and-cell-value-word-wrap.html