Editing Hidden text

{{Short description|Invisible text on a computer display}}
{{about|computer text|concealed writing in general|Hidden message}}
{{Self reference|For use of hidden text in Wikipedia, see [[Help:Hidden text]].}}
{{refimprove|date=January 2023}}
'''Hidden text''' is [[computer]] [[character (computer)|text]] that is displayed in such a way as to be invisible or unreadable.  Hidden text is most commonly achieved by setting the [[typeface|font]] colour to the same colour as the background, rendering the text invisible unless the user highlights it. 

Hidden text can serve several purposes.  Often, websites use it to disguise [[Spoiler (media)|spoiler]]s for readers who do not wish to read that text.  Hidden text can also be used to hide data from users who are less [[Internet]]-experienced or who are not familiar with a particular website. Another meaning may refer to hidden text to small messages at the bottom of advertisements that are permitted by some law to state a particular liability or requirement in text (also known as [[fine print]]). An example of this practice is to display an [[File Transfer Protocol|FTP]] password in hidden text to reduce the number of users who are able to access downloads and thereby save bandwidth. [[Parody]] sites (such as [[Uncyclopedia]]) occasionally use the technique as a joke about [[censorship]], with the "censored" text displayed black-on-black in an obvious manner akin to a theatrical [[stage whisper]]. 

It is also used by websites as a [[spamdexing]] technique to fill a page with [[Index term|keywords]] that a [[search engine]] will recognize but are not visible to a visitor. However, [[Google]] has taken steps to prevent this by parsing the color of text as it indexes it and checking to see if it is transparent, and may penalize pages and give them lower rankings. <ref>{{Cite web |last=Montti |first=Roger |date=2020-10-03 |title=Everything You Need to Know About Hidden Text & SEO |url=https://www.searchenginejournal.com/hidden-text-seo/208866/ |access-date=2023-01-12 |website=Search Engine Journal |language=en}}</ref>

Conversely, [[Project Honey Pot]] uses links intended only to be followed by spambots; the links point to [[honeypot (computing)|honeypots]] which detect e-mail address harvesting. A link using [[nofollow|rel="nofollow"]] (to hide it from legitimate search engine spiders) and hidden text (to remove it for human visitors) would remain visible to malicious 'bots.

Compare with [[metadata]], which is usually also hidden, but is used for different purposes.

'''Hidden characters''' are characters that are required for computer text to render properly but which are not a part of the content, so they are hidden. This includes characters such as those used to add a new line of text or to add space between words, commonly referred to as "white space characters".

==See also==
* [[Comment (computer programming)]]
* [[White fonting]]

==References==
{{reflist}} 

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hidden Text}}
[[Category:Internet terminology]]


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