Text Definition: Explanation, Facts, and Practice

To define a “text” look at these everyday situations where native English speakers use this word to describe both written content and mobile messages naturally.

Broaden your range of vocabulary by using these different alternatives that capture all the aspects of what “text” means in various contexts.

Related nouns: writing words content

Synonyms (contextual): article

Common collocations: written text original text full text

Build fluency by learning how to say “text” with other words and parts of speech in different communication settings.

With adjectives: long text short text original text main text

With verbs: read a text analyze a text interpret a text translate a text

With nouns (noun + noun): text analysis text structure text format textbook

Discover the “text” meaning by learning it in different idiomatic contexts. Understanding of these specifics will give more clarity to your language and give you more interesting ways to talk about various interactions.

• Stick to one’s text — following the source material closely, without adding, changing, or improvising beyond what is written.

  The actor was advised to stick to his text during the performance to avoid confusion.

• Triple text — refers to a message or written content that is repeated a lot of times in a row just for the sake of emphasis, clarity, or strong emotional effect.

  She sent a triple text to make sure her message was noticed.

• Text interpretation — it is the procedure of making clear or comprehending the sense of a written text, notably by investigating its ideas, symbols, or intentions.

  The class focused on text interpretation to uncover the deeper meaning of the poem.

Evaluate your understanding of this word through these questions in our intellectual game. Complete all tasks and as a result reinforce your comprehension of this term and English in general.

Broaden your international vocabulary by learning how to spell “text” and how written content and documents are described across different languages.

The written “text” has definitely played a fundamental role in the development of human civilization. The presented interesting information clearly shows that words and sentences have a very strong impact on our world.

• The oldest known text is over 5,000 years old.

  The very first written texts that still exist are represented by the Sumerian cuneiform tablets that had their origin in ancient Mesopotamia and were dated around 3400 BCE. Such text on clay tablets was used for the purpose of keeping administrative records and making laws.

• The Gutenberg Bible revolutionized text production.

  Before Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1440, all texts had to be copied by hand, so that books were very few and costly. His invention allowed the production of texts in large numbers, thus knowledge became available to the common man.

• Different writing systems read in different directions.

  English text is read from left to right and from top to bottom, which is the most commonly used reading direction. Other directions of can be found in Arabic and Hebrew languages (from right to left), or in traditional Chinese and Japanese scripts (from top to bottom and from right to left).

• Early texts had no spaces or punctuation.

  This was called scriptio continua, which was a practice that involved the letters flowing continuously without any breaks. Hence, reading was very slow and tiring, usually performed aloud because the reader had to understand the meaning and pauses only through the context.

Discover how different people incorporate phrases with “text” in their saying to convey various meanings and thoughts that are relatable to the majority of us.