Does it preserve formatting?

Plain text has no formatting; the PDF uses a monospace font and maintains line breaks. Indentation (spaces, tabs) stays intact.

What about long lines?

Word-wrapped to page width. Toggle to truncate (no wrapping) if your content is terminal-style fixed-width output that shouldn't be wrapped.

Toggle between monospace (for code), sans-serif (for prose), and serif (for letters). Size is configurable.

Yes — CJK, emoji, and special characters render if the embedded font covers them. Common fonts (Noto Sans CJK, DejaVu) are bundled.

Convert a plain text file into a downloadable PDF. Part of the DevTools Surf developer suite. Browse more tools in the PDF collection.

Plain text files predate the PDF specification by more than 20 years — they first became standardized with ASCII in 1963.
A text file uses roughly 1 byte per character, while the same content inside a PDF can use 10× more due to layout metadata and fonts.
The popular UTF-8 encoding used for modern text files was designed on a diner placemat by Ken Thompson and Rob Pike in 1992.

Does it preserve formatting?: Plain text has no formatting; the PDF uses a monospace font and maintains line breaks. Indentation (spaces, tabs) stays intact.
What about long lines?: Word-wrapped to page width. Toggle to truncate (no wrapping) if your content is terminal-style fixed-width output that shouldn't be wrapped.
Can I control the font?: Toggle between monospace (for code), sans-serif (for prose), and serif (for letters). Size is configurable.
Unicode characters?: Yes — CJK, emoji, and special characters render if the embedded font covers them. Common fonts (Noto Sans CJK, DejaVu) are bundled.

Convert a plain text file into a downloadable PDF. Part of the DevTools Surf developer suite. Browse more tools in the PDF collection.

Plain text files predate the PDF specification by more than 20 years — they first became standardized with ASCII in 1963.
A text file uses roughly 1 byte per character, while the same content inside a PDF can use 10× more due to layout metadata and fonts.
The popular UTF-8 encoding used for modern text files was designed on a diner placemat by Ken Thompson and Rob Pike in 1992.

Does it preserve formatting?: Plain text has no formatting; the PDF uses a monospace font and maintains line breaks. Indentation (spaces, tabs) stays intact.
What about long lines?: Word-wrapped to page width. Toggle to truncate (no wrapping) if your content is terminal-style fixed-width output that shouldn't be wrapped.
Can I control the font?: Toggle between monospace (for code), sans-serif (for prose), and serif (for letters). Size is configurable.
Unicode characters?: Yes — CJK, emoji, and special characters render if the embedded font covers them. Common fonts (Noto Sans CJK, DejaVu) are bundled.