plain text

  Authors can learn a lot about writing from computer programmers. Substack and Medium overflow with articles praising alternatives to Microsoft Word: Ulysses, Scrivener, whatever’s hot this week. Everyone craves a “distraction-free” writing environment, but I submit that “distraction-free” has less to do with the interface than with the benefits of using a text editor instead of a word processor. Writers would do well to get comfortable with what programmers call “the terminal,” which leads directly to an appreciation for plain text—simple, durable, efficient. The Unix programmers who built the foundations of modern computing made plain text central to their philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it well Write programs that work together Write programs to handle text streams, because that is auniversal interface Other writers discover text editors by chance—dabbling in HTML, managing gigantic book-length files without the clunky overhead of Microsoft Word. Unlike word processors, text editors are fast and can handle files that would cause Word to choke. True geeks prefer plain text because it never changes. I can open plain text files I wrote in 1983 on my first Kaypro computer with thousands of programs today. Try that with a Wang word processor […]