Plain Text vs Rich Text: Understanding the Difference

Plain text and rich text look similar on screen right up until you try to move content between two places that handle them differently, at which point hidden formatting can suddenly appear, or disappear, unexpectedly.

What Is Plain Text?

Plain text contains only characters, no fonts, no colors, no bold or italics, nothing beyond the literal text itself. A .txt file is a straightforward example.

What Is Rich Text?

Rich text includes formatting information alongside the actual text, font choices, bold and italic styling, colors, links, layered on top of the underlying characters through a markup or binary format. HTML, RTF, and word processor documents are all forms of rich text.

Why This Distinction Causes Real Problems

Pasting rich text into a field that expects plain text can carry over hidden formatting the destination didn’t expect, sometimes visibly (unexpected fonts or colors), sometimes invisibly (hidden metadata bloating the file size or breaking a strict format). Many applications offer a specific “paste as plain text” option exactly to strip this hidden formatting out deliberately.

Common Mistakes

• Pasting rich text where plain text is expected. This can introduce unwanted formatting, or invisible bloat, into a field or file meant to hold plain text only.
• Assuming a .txt file can contain formatting. Plain text files, by definition, cannot store bold, color, or font information at all; anything that looks formatted in a plain text file is actually just literal characters (like markdown symbols) not real formatting.
• Not using “paste as plain text” when it’s available. This option exists specifically to strip hidden formatting when pasting into a plain-text context, skipping it can leave unwanted formatting behind.

Use the Text Tools

The Character Counter and other Brekzy text tools work directly on plain text, giving predictable results without hidden formatting interfering.