Formatting your text newsletter correctly can make a failure into a success! Learn how to do it, and why.

Why using a text newsletter?

Sending an email (newsletter) in text format instead of word or html format will allow everyone on the internet to read it. No special software or utility will be needed.

However, to really make it work, consider the following.

• Make sure you use a monospaced font. A font where the width of the letter i is the same as the letter w. The letters may look different in width, but if you use a monospaced (instead of proportional) font, the space each character use, will be the same. This is necessary to be able to use row length row breaks and alignment.

• As said above the monospaced font in your newsletter will allow you to format your newsletter to use for example 65 characters width. This is pretty much the standard number of characters used in a newsletter today.

• Also, remember that things like underline, bold, italic, left, center, right and justified are adjustments not allowed in pure text, as they require special formatting.

• Use white space to make reading easier. Allow for two or more empty lines between content that is different.

• Also, make sure your formatting includes some kind of planning. This will allow you to maintain a similar look for your newsletter in each issue and that makes reading easier for your subscribers.

Tools of the trade

Use things like newsletter templates to make creation and publishing of your newsletter easier. Make sure you use the correct tool to write and format your newsletter.

Spy on other newsletterz

Subscribe to newsletters that have many subscribers. They will be of interest to you if nothing else for you to study their ways to format the content. Take notes on how they start their newsletter, table of index, menu and similar.

What type of information they include at the top and at the bottom of each issue.

This will help you decide and start formatting as well as make layout choices easier for you.