March 2022

Every so often I come across a blog post about the advantages of writing in plain text. And I think, Yeah! I should try that.

And then I might do it once or twice, and that’s it. Well, I’m trying again. I wrote this in plain text, actually! And Markdown! So there’s that.

The blog post that brought it up this time for me is this one by Derek Sivers.

Here’s a summary of why he likes working in plain text files:

• They’re portable – Every digital device can read and edit plain text. Maybe you don’t have the fanciest software to do it, but you can do it.
• They’re not tied to a specific software, app, or operating system.
• They’re available offline. You don’t need to be on the internet to access your files (assuming you have local files).
• They’re not dependent on a specific tool.
• They’re easy to convert into other formats.

Of course I went down a rabbit hole after I read Derek’s post, because that’s the sort of thing I do. Here are some more links about plain text files:

• Store everything in text files
• Writing in plain text
• Plain text life
• The plain text workflow

I mentioned Markdown, which is a lightweight coding language to add formatting to plain text. If you know what HTML tags look like, Markdown is a similar concept but with simpler syntax. Here’s a Markdown guide from Zapier.