How to Use Plain Text

This updated guide examines How to Use Plain Text and organizes the essential facts, background, and practical takeaways in clear American English.

Method 1

Using Notepad (on Windows)

1. Open Notepad. To do this, press?(the key with the Windows logo) andRat the same time. Typenotepadinto the window that appears. Press?Enteror click onOK.
2. Type your text on thekeyboard. It will appear in the editor window. You can move the cursor with the arrow keys. It is possible to use all Unicode characters, not just Latin letters and punctuation.
3. Open the "Save" dialogue. Either click onFile?Saveor pressCtrlandSat the same time.
4. Select file name, extension and encoding. When you're done, click onSave.
   • The file name can be any combination of characters, but you should choose one that is descriptive, short and easy to remember.
   • On Windows, file extensions are important, so that the system chooses the correct program to open a file with. So you should select.txt, which is the extension for plain text.
   • An ASCII encoding is appropriate if you are sure that your document will always contain only Latin letters, punctuation and numbers. Else, choose some Unicode encoding. There are other encodings, for example one that only has Cyrillic letters, but these aren't supported by all computers, so you shouldn't use them without a good reason.

Method 2

Using Nano (on Linux)

1. Open thecommand line. Its icon usually looks like a black screen with some white characters on it. It is called Terminal on many Linux platforms.
2. Typenano. Press?Enter.
3. Type your text on thekeyboard. It will appear in the window in which you opened nano. You can move the cursor with the arrow keys. It is possible to use all Unicode characters, not just Latin letters and punctuation.
4. Save the text. Nano refers to this as "Write Out". PressCtrlandOat the same time. Then, type a file name and press?Enter.
   • The file name can be any combination of characters, but you should choose one that is descriptive, short and easy to remember.
   • If you want a file extension, you can type.txt(that's the plain text extension) after the file name. This is useful for knowing what file it is yourself, but Linux doesn't care much about file extensions.
   • Most Linux platforms save in Unicode by default. Nano itself uses the system's default encoding, so if you will have to change that if Nano saves in the wrong encoding.
   • PressAlt+Dto save in DOS format. It uses different (invisible) characters to end lines than the Unix format.