Formatting Plain Text Emails
In this post, we have included tips and best practices to make plain text emails easier to read.
Inserting Carriage Returns Properly and Use Automatic Formatting
It is important to format your plain text messages correctly if you want them to display properly in different email programs used by your subscribers.
Please refer to this post about how our system can automatically fix some formatting problems with plain text messages.
Best practices for using plain text:
Indent and insert a blank line before starting a new paragraph
This is the first sentence in this
paragraph. Paragraphs may be long
or short.
In this paragraph the first line is
indented. Indented and non-indented
sentences are allowed. White space within
the paragraph lines is ignored in
defining paragraphs. Only completely blank
lines are significant.
How to use Bold Face
Use asterisks at the beginning and at the end of
*the passage you want to put in bold face*
How to Underline
To mimic underlining in plain text email:
Use underscore characters at the beginning and end of the
_underlined passage_
How to Italicize
Put a slash character before and after the
/italicized passage/
How to create a Table of Contents
A) Ordered list item
B) Ordered list item
C) Ordered list item
----------------------------
i. Ordered list item
ii. Ordered list item
iii. Ordered list item
iv. Ordered list item
How to create a List of Items
- unordered list item
- unordered list item
- unordered list item
A few more tips:
- Keep your emails short. 600 words or less is a good rule of thumb.
- If you have more to say, send readers to your web page.
- Keep your email focused on one idea or message.
- Many short messages are better than 1 long message