Plainform

Plainform is a term used in contemporary linguistic and information-design discourse to describe a standard, unadorned representation of words, symbols, or data. It emphasizes clarity, portability, and ease of processing, often at the expense of expressive embellishment. In practice, plainform refers to a form that is canonical, content-focused, and free from typographic or structural markup that would complicate parsing by humans or machines.

In linguistics, plain form commonly denotes the base or dictionary form of a word—the form that appears in lexical entries and is used for root identification. It is contrasted with inflected, conjugated, or derived forms. In education, plain form supports straightforward comparison and morphological analysis, though it may be less representative of everyday usage.

In information design and data interchange, plainform is used to describe plain-text representations that avoid rich formatting. These representations favor readability and interoperability across systems, enabling straightforward parsing without relying on specialized schemas. Typical plainform renderings use simple lines of text with minimal syntax, often employing indentation or simple key-value pairs to encode structure.

The term is not tied to a single standard and has varied usage across disciplines. It is commonly encountered in discussions of accessible documentation, minimalism in interface design, and linguistic lexicon compilation. See also plain text, dictionary form, minimal markup, and unmarked representation.