We’ve talked about why you should be using plain text email and its benefits like improved delivery and easy cell phone formatting. Now, let’s talk about how to set it up!
Plain text email is readable and understandable from the most powerful computer with the biggest monitor to the cell phone with a 4-line display. It doesn’t contain malware. And it doesn’t burn out your eyes with graphics and color. 😉 There are a few things to keep in mind, though, when formatting plain text email.
How to Format Plain Text Email
Formatting
First of all, do not use any text formatting like bold, italic, or special colors. Plain text emails also do not include graphics, pictures, or fancy email signatures. Just letters and numbers.
Line Length
Other than formatting, there’s just one thing to keep in mind: make sure to add a carriage return character after every 50 or 60 characters.
Why? So your email does not end up looking like this:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing
elit. Vestibulum
eget sem vel lectus malesuada mollis vitae non
lorem. Praesent eget
magna odio, malesuada congue metus. Duis aliquam,
est ac rhoncus
pretium, lacus leo adipiscing felis, at vehicular
justo massa quis
urna.
Some of your Subscriber’s software might change your email to display shorter lines if the carriage return is missing.
Help with Formatting
Need help with a long email? Transform paragraphs of text into short lines, free of charge, by using the online tool at formatit.com. Simply paste your article into the online form, choose how wide you want the lines to appear, and it will do the work. You just copy the result and paste it into your email.
How wide to make each line is a personal choice.
Pro Tip: The narrower the column of text, the easier it is to read. That’s why newspapers are divided up into narrow columns.
That’s It!
There you have it! Now you know everything needed to format a plain text email. Easy peasy.
Formatting an HTML email would take a large book to describe all the rules and exceptions. That’s because there is no standard for HTML email. Every email software app as well as every online mail system does things a little bit differently. There are advantages to following the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid) with emails to groups of people.
Mail-List.com has an option that will automatically format your outgoing emails to the width that you choose. You just write your email and hit send. No worrying about this little detail. Check out ALL our options by starting a free trial today!
