What Does Text Mode Mean?

Text mode is a personal computer display setting that divides the display screen into 25 rows and 80 columns in order to display text without images. In text mode, each box can contain one character. Text mode contrasts with graphics mode, which features an array of pixels instead of text boxes.

Techopedia Explains Text Mode

Text mode initially came to prominence in the early 1970s, when video display text terminals started to replace teleprinters in human-computer interfacing. This simple display mode dominated the computer’s visual interface for much of that decade, before Apple and other smaller companies began introducing the graphic user interface into the mainstream.