What is a Plain Text?
Plain text refers to text document carrying simple characters and format that represents readable material without any additional added style or font. Plain text is essentially the basic foundation of text that is the most optimized to be read through any application and has the ability to feature text in the form of characters, symbols, spaces and numbers. With this simple text layout, information has the ability to be communicated with ease and efficiency and read with clarity. As such, plain text has a multitude of advantages to clearly convey messages as well as exchange and store these documents in a quick manner.
Types of Text
When understanding text documents, there are two types that are commonly chosen. From a simple understanding, plain text is the non-stylized and formatted version of a text document, while rich text features formatted text.
- Plain Text: Plain text carries no additional style other than written characters, numerical figures and symbols. This text does not support styles such as bold, italicized or underlined text.
- Rich Text: This type of text supports the stylized component that features a formatted version of text. Rich text supports the subtle adjustments to texts such as bold, italicized and underlined. Furthermore, this type of text features an overall page format which designs the layout that includes paragraph indentation, margin formatting and line spacing. The opportunity to design is abundantly available with a rich text document.
Benefits of Plain Text
While plain text may have limited mobility in terms of the lack of format or style, this form of a text document has many benefits that can clearly be understood.
- Convenience of Readability: Plain text documents carry very minimal format which allows for these documents to be read on any application. This level of accessibility is ideal when sharing information from a widespread perspective. There are no additional applications that a reader must download in order to access or read a plain text document.
- Memory Size: Along with the convenience of readability, a plain text document’s best feature is the minimal size it carries. These documents can be easily transmitted in their entirety taking up very little space. When additional styles or format are added to a text document the file size can continue to grow adding a heavier weight of memory. Plain text doesn’t face an issue when storing simple documents or transmitting them.
- Communication Efficiency: Another advantage of a plain text document stems from the ability to focus solely on the content of the text. As a plain text document can only support characters, the writer can simply focus on the written message and convey their point without any additional distractions. While additional formatting and style can create an interactive and appealing text document, the intentional purpose of the text can be overlooked due to its design. A plain text document can focus on the content as well as eliminate concern to format or design the document to look a certain way.
