Human-readable medium and data

In most contexts, the alternative to a human-readable representation is a machine-readable format or medium of data primarily designed for reading by electronic, mechanical or optical devices, or computers.

With the advent of standardized, highly structured markup languages, such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), the decreasing costs of data storage, and faster and cheaper data communication networks, compromises between human-readability and machine-readability are now more common-place than they were in the past.

[1] Various organizations have standardized the definition of human-readable and machine-readable data and how they are applied in their respective fields of application, e.g., the Universal Postal Union.

[3] Occasionally "human-readable" is used to describe ways of encoding an arbitrary integer into a long series of English words.

Compared to decimal or other compact binary-to-text encoding systems, English words are easier for humans to read, remember, and type in.