A Macintosh term for a text object which carries with it various kinds of formatting, such as font, style, and size information. If a region of styled text is copied and pasted from one application into another which recognizes styled text (such as a word processor), the formatting is preserved. If it is pasted into an application which does not recognize the styling (such as a terminal emulator or plain text editor), it is automatically converted to plain text.

(This may not sound like much of a radical idea. Keep in mind, though, that when the Macintosh introduced styled text, it was indeed a radical idea to be able to move formatted text -- or pretty much anything else -- from one desktop application to another without damage or heavy hand-hackery.)

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