nonformatted

Nonformatted is a descriptive term used to refer to content that contains no markup, styling, or presentation instructions. In computing, nonformatted data is stored or transmitted as plain text, with characters representing the data itself rather than formatting commands. The term is not a formal standard but a general descriptor used across contexts to distinguish plain text from formatted or rich content.

Common examples include plain text files (.txt), log files, and programming source code kept in its raw text form. Structured plain-text formats such as CSV or TSV are also considered nonformatted in the sense that they do not embed styling; they encode structure with delimiters rather than with markup.

Advantages of nonformatted content include simplicity, small file size, wide compatibility, and ease of manual inspection. It is typically easier to parse programmatically and more resilient to software changes over time. Storage and transmission are often more efficient because there is no embedded formatting metadata. Nonformatted data can be advantageous for long-term archival and cross-platform data exchange.

Limitations include lack of presentation features, typography, and semantic metadata. Rendering of nonformatted data depends on rendering software and font choices; line endings and character encodings can introduce portability issues across systems.

In practice, nonformatted content contrasts with formatted or markup-based formats such as HTML, RTF, or Markdown, which include styling instructions alongside content. The term is commonly used in discussions of data portability, archival formats, and text processing.