languageonly

Languageonly is a term encountered in various technical and linguistic contexts to denote content or interfaces that are restricted to natural language text, excluding non-text data such as images, audio, or structured media. The phrase is not standardized as a formal specification, but it is commonly used in documentation, configuration options, and discussion to describe a mode or constraint that focuses on language data.

In software and data processing, languageonly can refer to settings or pipelines that handle only textual input and output. For example, a content management system might offer a languageonly mode that disables media uploads and visual rendering, or an API might accept and return only plain text. In natural language processing, datasets labeled languageonly are typically composed exclusively of textual sentences or tokens, without accompanying multimedia annotations. The term can also appear in educational or linguistic contexts to indicate materials designed for studying language structure and use without audiovisual components.

Standardization varies by project, and languageonly should be interpreted from its context. Ambiguity can arise if the term is used loosely to mean “text-only” or more narrowly as “text in a specified language.” When precision is required, it is better to specify the exact constraints, such as text format (plain text, JSON), supported languages, and whether punctuation, case, or diacritics are preserved.

See also: text-only, plain text, natural language processing, data modality.