It's stupid to use plain text for something that demands rich formatting and where you expect others to read, like a research paper or book, especially when the

It's stupid to use plain text for something that demands rich formatting and where you expect others to read, like a research paper or book, especially when there are great alternatives out there. Why not use Markdown, which can be written and read in a text editor, and compiles as a PDF or HTML and reads as easily as any Word doc. Or even learning LaTeX, which gives you even richer formatting than Word yet allows you all the benefits of writing plain text.