Re: Good beginner doc-hacking task: clear-text vs. cleartext vs. clear text vs. plaintext etc..

On 06.11.26 15:49, David E. Wheeler wrote:
> On Nov 6, 2026, at 09:44, Karen Jex <karenjex(at)hotmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
>> I would love to take this on - thank you for flagging it as a potential first doc-hacking task.
>
>
> Yay!
>
>> Just to confirm my understanding:
>> 1. We should use "cleartext" and "plaintext" throughout, not "clear-text", "clear text", "plain text" or "plain-text".
>> 2. There is at least one case where "plaintext" is used incorrectly in place of "cleartext”.
>
> I thought these were synonyms, in contrast to “ciphertext”. Should we not pick one to replace all of the others? Searching around a bit, it seems like “ciphertext” and “plaintext” are most often contrasting terms, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciphertext.

My understanding is/was that plaintext is data meant for encryption,
after which it becomes ciphertext. Cleartext is data not meant for
encryption.

So you would use plaintext and ciphertext when describing the steps of
an encryption method. And you would use cleartext when describing what
goes over the wire when you do do LDAP authentication in PostgreSQL.

But it seems like these terms are not actually universally used that
way. If we tidy this up, consider adding glossary entries.