plain text
Words without styling
Plain text is unformatted text—characters without styling like bold, italics, or fonts.
It's the simplest form of digital text, readable by any program: Save it as plain text so anyone can open it.
In cryptography, plaintext (often one word) is the readable message before encryption, as opposed to ciphertext.
- unformattedNot styled or arranged
- no frillsWithout extras or embellishments
- decodedConverted from cipher
- unencryptedNot in cipher
- ASCIIElectronic character encoding standard
raw · raw data · monospace · cleartext · markup language · computing · flat file · readme file · copy paste · word processor · extension · document formatting · document · simple · source · bare · bare bones · basic
- data formatsJSON, XML, CSV, YAML, HTML
- markupXML, HTML, element, attribute, tag
- text formatsHTML, XML, Markdown, LaTeX, RTF
- textplaintext, words, characters, document, typing
- document typesPDF, doc, txt, RTF, HTML
- plain languagesimple English, simple language, simple words, simple grammar, simple sentences
plain textciphertext
Encoded, unreadable message
encrypted data · scrambled text · encrypted message · coded message · cipher
plain textmultimedia
Combined content formats
binary data · graphics · multimedia content · hypertext · structured data