text

In computing, plain text is the contents of an ordinary sequential file readable as textual material without much processing. Plain text is different from formatted text, where style information is included, and “binary files” in which some portions must be interpreted as binary objects (encoded integers, real numbers, images, etc.). The encoding has traditionally been either ASCII, one of its many derivatives such as ISO/IEC 646 etc., or sometimes EBCDIC. Unicode-based encodings such as UTF-8 and UTF-16 are gradually replacing the older ASCII derivatives limited to 7 or 8 bit codes.