# [TECH] [2021. II] Why plaintext?

If plaintext is a suitable option - almost invariably it is the best option. In no particular order, a few of the great advantages of plaintext.

### Searchability and manipulation
The ease of search and manipulation of plaintext files is without rival. Consequently, one has a myriad of great utilities (grep, awk, vim, to name a few) at one's disposal for those tasks.

### Universality and durability
Various formats and the associated software come and go. Plaintext is here to stay - it is ubiquitous across all systems and it doesn't require any special (and certainly not proprietary) software for access.

### Privacy and security
Plaintext gives full control over data and by eschewing dependency on any particular software the owner has full control over its security and encryption.

### Easy and fast to use
WYSIWYG done right. Open any editor (although even this is optional) and start typing.