Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
Email can be sent in several formats the most common being plain text and HTML. We'll look at the difference, and which might be preferable.
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?
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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.
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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:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
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:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
In this example I've:
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Specified a specific type-face or font
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Specified a size for the font
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indicated that the word "brown" should be bold
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indicated that the phrase "lazy dog" should be in italics
How'd I do that? Here's what the HTML encoding actually looks like:
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 12pt;">The quick <strong>brown</strong> fox jumps over the <em>lazy dog</em>.</span>
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:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Some people may see this as your message, or worse, instead:
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 12pt;">The quick <strong>brown</strong> fox jumps over the <em>lazy dog</em>.</span>
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:
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You can set a default for all email.
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You can change the format of the current message as you compose it.
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.
Article C2675 - June 2, 2006
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
I agree with your preference for plain text, though for different reasons. I would not mind pretty email. But I find that the quoting system in htlm email does not always work.
In text email
> the quoted text is on a line with an greater than sign at the beginning.
(In some email programs, forget the name, one can have the senders name before the greater than sign)
Tim> This is a line written by time.
Either of these designations of what texts is quote is very useful, if not essential.
In html email however the quoted text is placed on lines formatted such that they begin with a horizontal bar.
I find that this formatting often does not work, in that either the quoted text lacks a bar, or the following line of my text (my response) is given a bar. I find myself attempting to format that bar, and see the bar coming into places that
I do not want it, or attempting to remove the bar
and seeing it also removed from places that I do.
It is very annoying. If only it worked, html
email would be okay.
There is one other problem. When email is sent
out as text I beileve that line feeds are automatically added ever x characters (settable up
to about 70 or 80 characters). In HTML email there
is no such setting, and many people seem to
just keep typing. I have a wide screen compputer
so I must reduce the size of the email window to
avoid having to read 20 inch (?) lines of text.
In non space delimited languages (Japanese) when
one reduces the size of the email window the
carriage feeds occur independly of the meaningful
breaks in the text such that breaks occur the mi
ddle of words. Perhaps these breaks would also
occur in the middle of words in text email too,
but I think that it encorages us to put our own
line feeds into the text and not just to keep typing on and on adinfinitum.
This reponses is too long but while html email
sounds like a good idea and I am in favour of
non-verbal communiation, in practice it has
important flaws.
Tim
Posted by: Timothy Takemoto at October 22, 2010 7:34 PMIn html email however the quoted text is placed on lines formatted such that they begin with a horizontal bar.
Sorry that should be a "verticle bar" like this:
Posted by: Timothy Takemoto at October 22, 2010 7:36 PM| html quoted text looks kind of like this.
I appreciate the thoroughness of your explanation of the difference between HTML and plain text. When I googled your page came up. Nice Job! By the way I opted out when the window popped up to sign up for emails of other helpful tips but if you could include me I would be grateful.
Posted by: Beverly Carbonara at March 25, 2011 1:12 PMIs there a way to unscramble those illegible emails? The sender, who emails lots of articles, says I am the only one who has a problem reading his emails. At least, nobody else has complained. His personal emails are perfect. It's those that he forwards from other sources that are garbled. This has begun recently. What to do?
08-Jul-2011
Posted by: J Wright at July 8, 2011 9:45 AM
In an email program I was pretty confused to send a mail whether in "Text" format or "HTML".HTML format was not working properly.Then I switched to "Text" format found it works and later sent the mail.But I was having a doubt in my mind that whether the recipient got it properly.The system shown your formatting might be changed. Reading this extremely helpful article on Mail format clears all my confusion.Thanks a lot.
Posted by: Paritosh Hajra at February 16, 2012 6:56 PM