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I tried posting to a moderated email discussion group I'm on, but my post was rejected because the moderator said it was "html". They wanted me to switch to "plain text". What are they talking about, and how do I do it? HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It's the way web pages such as this one are encoded to handle things like bold, italics and even color text red. Plain text is, well, it's plain. There are reasons and times you might want to use both. Switching's not hard, if you know where to look. Plain Text and HTML In the beginning (so to speak) there was plain text. Quite literally, plain text is text, and only text, along with a couple of simple representations for things like end-of-line. Plain text has no formatting. Plain text typically is represented as looking very plain. It's often displayed using what's called a "mono-spaced" font - meaning that each character takes up the same space on the line. Here's an example:
"HTML started as the way to describe how web pages
should look."
HTML started as the way to describe how web pages should look. It includes ways to specify formatting, colors, positioning, and some amount of layout. As email became more popular, people started wanting to make their messages "look" as nice as they felt web pages looked. They wanted that formatting, the ability to put in pictures, and the like. Let's look at our example again, this time in HTML:
In this example I've:
How'd I do that? Here's what the HTML encoding actually looks like:
You can see that the HTML format is quite a bit larger than the plain text form. It has to be, to include all that additional formatting information. HTML and Email One thing that's important to know about HTML format used in email, is that not all email programs know how to interpret it. Most do, but some do not. What does that mean? That means that if you send out your email looking like this:
Some people may see this as your message, or worse, instead:
Quite the mess, right? Extremely difficult to read, right? And, in fact, some mailing list services don't handle HTML properly, which is probably why your mailing list moderator has asked you not to use it. Choosing HTML or Plain Text Choosing Plain Text or HTML formatting for your email can, in most email programs, be done one of two ways:
Exactly how you do this (or if you can, in fact, change the default) will vary based on what mail program you're using. I'll show how to do both in Outlook Express as an example. To choose which format you want Outlook Express to use by default, click the Tools menu, select Options, and click on the Send tab in the resulting dialog:
Under Mail Sending Format, select HTML or Plain Text as appropriate. To change the current format of a message that you are composing, click on the Format menu, and then make sure that the format you want, Rich Text (HTML) or Plain Text is selected:
The appearance of your message will probably change, and if switching from HTML to Plain Text, you may get a warning that you're about to lose your formatting. Which should you use? Unless there's a requirement, like perhaps your mailing list, it really depends. Warning: personal opinion ahead. I really tend to favor plain text email. The focus should be on the message, not how "pretty" it looks. Plain text email is smaller, delivers and downloads quicker, and is also much less likely to be erroneously marked as spam. Personally, I don't really see a need for lots of cutesy images and stationary - to me they just detract from the message. In cases where people have images blocked (which is the default for many email programs) the message actually looks worse, as the images are replaced by placeholders. On the other hand, some people do want their email to look much richer. You'll often see a lot of businesses using HTML email to make their message look more formal, more professional, and often much more in line with their corporate image. Related: • Recent Comments
i'm trying to write to you, but when i try to post my comment, it tells me it didn't work. what happened ? Posted by: maggie at June 2, 2006 06:12 PMNo way for me to know without at lest the exact error message. Posted by: Leo at June 2, 2006 06:14 PMI FOUND A GENIAL WAY ON HOW TO GET RID OF THE FAMOUS HOTBAR". I RESTORED MY COMPUTER UP TO ONE DAY BEFORE I ACCIDENTLY DOWNLOADED HOTBAR. WENT INTO START,HELP AND SUPPORT,CHOSE AN ACTIN, CLICKED ON RESTORING THE SYSTEM, CLICKED IN RESTORING THE COMPUTER AT A CERTAIN HOUR, PRESSED ON NEXT, CLICKED ONA DATE, CONFIRMED THE SELECTION, PRESSED ON NEXT. THHIS SHUTS DOWN THE COMPUTER AND OPENS IT ALL BY ITSELF. I TRIED TO WRITE TO YOU, BUT MY MESSAGE WOUDN'T GO OUT TO YOU. Posted by: MAGGIE at June 2, 2006 06:21 PMPost a comment on "What's the difference between "plain text" and "HTML" email?":
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