Text to PDF

The three fonts offered are Helvetica, Times and Courier, the standard faces every PDF reader has built in. Using them means no font file has to be embedded, which keeps the output at a few kilobytes and guarantees it renders the same on any machine.

For a document meant to be read on screen, 11 or 12 point with a 20mm margin is a safe starting point. For something to be printed and annotated, widen the margin to 25mm. Courier is monospaced, so use it for code, logs and anything where column alignment matters.

The standard fonts use WinAnsi encoding, which covers English, the Western European accents, curly quotes, dashes and the common typographic characters. Anything you paste from a word processor usually falls inside it.

Scripts outside that range, such as Devanagari, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Greek or Cyrillic, need a font embedded in the file, which this tool does not do. Rather than writing a broken PDF quietly, it replaces those characters with question marks and lists them above, so you know before you send the file.

Printing a page to PDF from the browser works, and for a web page it is often the right answer. It is a poor fit for plain text, because you you get the headers, footers, URL stamp and whatever margins the browser print dialog decides on.

This tool writes the document directly, so what you set is what you get: one text block, your page size, your margins, nothing else on the page.

How do I turn plain text into a PDF?

Paste or type your text, choose the page size, font, font size and margins, then download. The PDF is written in your browser, so nothing is uploaded and the download starts immediately.

Which fonts are available?

Helvetica, Times and Courier, the standard PDF fonts that every reader can display without embedding a font file. That keeps the file small and guarantees it renders the same everywhere.

Can I use A4 and Letter page sizes?

Yes, along with Legal and A5. Page size, orientation and margins are all set before you download, and the preview shows how many pages you will get.

Does it support other languages and accents?

Western European accents are supported through the standard PDF encoding. Scripts outside that range, such as Devanagari, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic or Cyrillic, need an embedded font and will not render correctly here, so the tool warns you when it finds characters it cannot write.

Are my documents private?

Yes. The text stays in the browser tab and the PDF is generated on your device. Nothing is sent to a server and nothing is stored.

Can I convert markdown instead of plain text?

Use the markdown to PDF tool for that. It renders headings, lists, bold, italic, code and links, while this tool keeps your text exactly as typed.