What is Plain Text Diagramming
Plain text diagramming is creating visual diagrams using only characters like letters, numbers, dashes, pipes, and brackets. Instead of drawing boxes and lines with a mouse, you type characters to build shapes and connections. This approach has been used for decades, especially in programming and technical documentation. Plain text diagrams are simple, portable, and can be stored in any file format that supports text.
ASCII Art and Manual Text Diagrams
ASCII art is the most basic form of text diagramming, where you manually arrange characters to create pictures or diagrams. For example, you might use dashes and pipes to draw boxes, and arrows made from greater-than and less-than symbols to show connections. While this method requires patience and careful spacing, it works everywhere text can be displayed. Many developers use ASCII diagrams for quick sketches in documentation or comments.
Text-Based Diagramming Languages
Modern text-based diagramming uses special languages that convert text code into professional diagrams. Popular options include Mermaid, which creates flowcharts and sequence diagrams, and PlantUML, which specializes in UML diagrams. These tools let you write simple text instructions that automatically arrange shapes, boxes, and connections. This makes creating complex diagrams much faster and easier than manual ASCII art. You write the text code, and the tool generates a picture.
Advantages of Plain Text Diagramming
Plain text diagrams work on any computer, phone, or device that can read text files. They take up very little storage space compared to image files. Text diagrams can be easily edited, version controlled using tools like Git, and shared through email or messaging. They also avoid compatibility problems that come with proprietary software. For programmers and technical writers, plain text diagramming fits naturally into their workflow.
Common Uses and Examples
Plain text diagramming is widely used for flowcharts, organizational charts, network diagrams, timelines, and process maps. In software development, developers use text diagrams to show code structure, database relationships, and system architecture. Documentation teams use them to explain processes in technical manuals. Many open-source projects prefer text-based diagrams because they can be stored directly in code repositories alongside their projects.
Getting Started with Text Diagramming
To start using plain text for diagramming, you can begin with basic ASCII art using any text editor, or try a text diagramming tool like Mermaid or Graphviz. Many online editors let you write text code and see the diagram appear instantly. Most tools have simple syntax that is easy to learn, even for beginners. The learning curve is much shorter than learning traditional diagramming software. 
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