What is TXT?
TXT is short for “TEXT” and refers to the file format within the computer system. These text files have the extension .TXT and can contain information only from a recognized set of characters, known as ASCII codes. ASCII or American Standard Code for Information Interchange is the standard used in computer systems and it is composed of 128 characters. Each byte of computer information on a text file may contain one character from the standard ASCII codes. Aside from ASCII characters or codes, text files may also contain control characters such as line feed, tabs, and carriage returns. It is also common that text files have some form of encoding like Unicode UTF-8 and Unicode UTF-16.

If people encounter files with the extension .TXT, they usually see very little formatting involved. Fonts appear to be very basic and standard with no “bold” attributes or “italics”. This simple plain text format is the one that can be recognized by the computer’s system terminal and the format that can be displayed by common text editors. And since the format is plain and simple, text files may be opened easily by almost any text software, program or application, making it a “universal” type of file. Across different platforms, details and contents of files with .TXT extension can be viewed by users conveniently.

Plain text files are also commonly used in terms of data transfer on the Internet. Other than its flexibility across different platforms, text files typically don’t bulk up the file size making them ideal for data transfer on the internet. The only problem one may encounter with basic text files is that some contents may not be rendered properly when the data transfer involves computers that use different character set codes. There may also be minor issues with the way Mac computers display text files compared to those using Linux operating systems.