https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format#Code_example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format#Code_example From their example: $ echo "{\rtf1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format#Code_example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format#Code_example From their example: $ echo "{\rtf1\ansi{\fonttbl\f0\fswiss Helvetica;}\f0\pard This is some {\b bold} text.\par }" |wc -c 86 $ echo "This is some bold text." |wc -c 24 Also see cd34's comment. If you're going to add information, that has to be a higher byte count.