Tag plaintext

📝 The <plaintext> Tag in HTML: Displaying Raw Text from Here Onward

The <plaintext> tag is a deprecated HTML element that tells the browser to render all the following content as plain text, ignoring any HTML markup after it.

📌 What Is the <plaintext> Tag?

  • The <plaintext> tag causes the browser to treat everything that follows as raw text, including what would normally be HTML tags.
  • It was introduced in early versions of HTML but is obsolete and no longer supported in modern standards.
  • The tag has no closing tag — everything after it is plain text until the end of the document.

✅ Basic Syntax

<plaintext>
<h1>This will not be a heading</h1>
<p>But just plain text</p>

🧩 What Happens?

Instead of rendering the <h1> and <p> as HTML elements, the browser displays the tags themselves as text.

🧪 Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<p>This is a normal paragraph.</p>
<plaintext>
<h1>This looks like code</h1>
<p>And this too</p>
</body>
</html>

Rendered output:

This is a normal paragraph.

<h1>This looks like code</h1>
<p>And this too</p>

⚠️ Important Notes

  • <plaintext> is non-standard and deprecated; avoid using it in modern HTML.
  • Modern alternatives include using <pre>, <code>, or escaping HTML entities to show code.
  • The tag is not supported in many browsers and can cause unexpected results.

🔄 Modern Alternative: Showing Code Safely

Use <pre> and <code>, with escaped HTML characters:

<pre><code>
&lt;h1&gt;This looks like code&lt;/h1&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And this too&lt;/p&gt;
</code></pre>

🏁 Summary

The <plaintext> tag is an old way to display everything following it as raw text, including HTML tags. It’s obsolete and should be avoided in favor of modern, standardized tags like <pre> and <code>.