I've just discovered that nano has a lot of useful capabilities that are switched off by default:
* “soft” line-wrapping (for display only)
* “smart” Home key (alternating between the start of the line and the first non-whitespace character)
* auto-indent new lines
* constantly display the cursor position (line and column numbers)
* mouse support (click to move the cursor, or use the commands in the help rows)

See the bottom of the `^G` help text, or `man nanorc`