How to Use Plain Text

Using Notepad (on Windows)

1. Open Notepad. To do this, press ⌘ (the key with the Windows logo) and R at the same time. Type notepad into the window that appears. Press ↵ Enter or click on OK.

2. Type your text on the keyboard. 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 on File → Save or press Ctrl and S at the same time.

4. Select file name, extension and encoding. When you're done, click on Save.

   1. The file name can be any combination of characters, but you should choose one that is descriptive, short and easy to remember.
   2. 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.
   3. 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.