Use Plain Text Email?

Once upon a time, I maintained a website called The Plain Text Project. The aim of that site was to demonstrate how anyone, regardless of their level of facility and ability with technology, could use plain text to become better organized and more productive.

Over the life of The Plain Text Project, people would regularly suggest tools or sites to check out. One resource that was suggested more than a couple of times was a site called Use plain text email. For whatever reason, I never did get around to checking out that site before I shuttered The Plain Text Project at the end of 2022.

Jump forward to early August, 2024. While looking through some old notes for something or the other, I found a reminder to check out Use plain text email. A couple of years too late, but right on time …

I spent some time reading the site and what I found was a bit disappointing. Here’s why.

Who’s the Site For?

While reading through the site, I kept asking myself Who is this site trying to reach? Is it everyone who uses email, regardless of their technical knowledge? Is it techies or wannabe techies? Both? Perhaps someone else?

In many ways, this statement at the top of the site pretty much sets its tone:

Many people, particularly in technical communities, strongly prefer or even require the use of plain text email from participants

I’ll be blunt and say that few people outside of technical communities care about plain text email (although they should). Fewer still require or even expect the use of plain text email from their correspondents.

If Use plain text email is intended for a more technical audience, it caters to that audience quite well. If, on other hand, it’s aiming for a wider audience then the site misses that mark. By a decent margin.

The Focus is Too Heavily on Tools

After some introductory remarks, there’s a long list of email software. Listing tools near the top of the site has the potential to nudge more than some people away from the site.

And about those tools: of the ones that Use plain text email recommends, I’ll hazard a guess and say that few, if any, of them are used by a majority of computer users. By a majority I mean average folk who use computers daily. People who aren’t writing code or hacking on hardware. People for whom Python is a constricting snake and who never open a terminal window. No, not all computer users are techies or are interested in becoming techies.

That list is balanced out, however, by other options which are widely used by computer users of all stripes. Regardless, the bulk of the site focuses on tools and how to set them up. Which brings us to …

The main intent (as I see it, anyway) of the site is definitely buried. That intent? Explaining why people should use plain text email in the first place. There is set of solid reasons for that towards the bottom of the page — something that should be at the top. I don’t see the point of putting the emphasis (whether deliberately or not) on tools rather than the what and the why of using plain text email. Explaining the what and the why is far more important than discussing tools.

Terminology

Ah, the terminology … Jargon like the following is peppered throughout the site:

• 72 columns.
• TUI.
• Top posting.
• format=flowed.
• multipart/alternative.

After reading the site a couple of times, I conducted a very unscientific survey (via email, ’natch) to see if some of the mix of people I know understands or cares about any of that. My sample was a dozen people — OK, I don’t have all that many friends …

You know what? Most of them didn’t know what top posting was, what a TUI is (my friends in New Zealand joked about sending messages using a native bird), or what columns (let alone 72 of them) are when talking about text. And they didn’t care.

Regardless, none of that really helps explain why plain text emails are preferable to HTML/rich text ones.

A Couple of Positives

Even though it appears at the bottom of the site, there is a very good explanation of what’s wrong with HTML email and why you should avoid it.

The site solicits feedback via email rather than only accepting feedback by submitting issue using GitHub, GitLab, or git-whatever. That definitely lowers the barrier to participation.

Final Thoughts

The idea behind Use plain text email is a good one. But if that site is aiming for a wide audience — one of people with diverse levels of facility with technology — then its execution leaves a lot to be desired.

And that’s the unfortunate part. With some adjustments, Use plain text email could be a useful resource to more than what I perceive to be it’s current, narrow niche.

— Scott Nesbitt