files/en-us/web/html/reference/elements/plaintext/index.md
{{deprecated_header}}
The <plaintext> HTML element renders everything following the start tag as raw text, ignoring any following HTML. There is no closing tag, since everything after it is considered raw text.
[!WARNING] Do not use this element.
<plaintext>is deprecated since HTML 2, and not all browsers implemented it. Browsers that did implement it didn't do so consistently.<plaintext>is obsolete; browsers that accept it may instead treat it as a {{HTMLElement("pre")}} element that still interprets HTML within.- If
<plaintext>is the first element on the page (other than any non-displayed elements, like {{HTMLElement("head")}}), do not use HTML at all. Instead serve a text file with thetext/plainMIME-type.- Instead of
<plaintext>, use the {{HTMLElement("pre")}} element or, if semantically accurate (such as for inline text), the {{HTMLElement("code")}} element. Escape any<,>and&characters, to prevent browsers inadvertently parsing the element content as HTML.- A monospaced font can be applied to any HTML element via a CSS {{cssxref("font-family")}} style with the
monospacegeneric value.
This element has no other attributes than the global attributes common to all elements.
This element implements the {{domxref('HTMLElement')}} interface.
<!-- ## Technical summary -->{{Specifications}}
{{Compat}}
<plaintext>.