The PDF file is something we are all familiar with. We download them constantly. We have to read countless ones for employment onboarding. We use it as a means to send out resumes and other important personal documents. It is, by far, the most prolific and solid format, there is for text documents. Sadly, the PDF doesn’t get much love and attention, especially in the world of constantly changing and updated formats. Every single day, there’s some new startup kids touting their superior means of sending and receiving text info. 

Well, the PDF is still king—by a long shot. Here are some surprising advantages that the PDF file has over every other format. 

It’s the most widely used

The problem that PDF files attempt to solve is the ability to read and edit documents across an increasingly wide array of machines. Software engineers spent countless months trying to crack this code. They finally got it with PDF. Not many of us remember a time when we didn’t use it. Adobe rolled out Portable Document Format, and it quietly took hold of all industries. One can argue up and down that Word documents are a superior editor. This may be true, but that’s not the point. Ask industry experts about how many word documents get converted. For example, Soda pdf’s Word to PDF, generates more PDFs for business and finance specifically than any other Word service. It’s the utility of the format that gathers its audience, and in the business world, PDFs are still the base standard for document storage. 

Medicine and medical school

In the West, there is this idea that medical textbooks have to be extremely expensive because of the vast knowledge that may hold. Now, as much that may be true, there are other countries that take a different approach. In the medical field, countless volumes of textbooks have been distilled and analyzed through independent notes. Those notes, then get circulated to individuals who do not have the $1000 book bill that is often recommended by professors. The file format of all these notes? PDF. Because of the PDF format, students from humble backgrounds can have a chance at accurate and democratized knowledge straight from the books most Western nations take for granted.

Taxes

Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s the U.S. Internal Revenue Services had the dizzying task of trying to work with, and collect money from, absolutely every single industry in the country. The advantage of the PDF format to businesses is that they were able to print and fill out their own tax forms, giving each business the freedom to fall within their own timeline. Having to wait for and comply with bad distribution puts the strain on business in general. PDF and the democratized document service is provided as both a relief and an advantage for everyone.

The PDF format isn’t going away anytime soon. Its advantages far outweighs its challenges and people are happy with what it can offer. On a weekly basis, businesses and individuals run into dozens of them, have printed countless, and send even more. So if you want to adequately send your documents in a format you know 100% can get through, use PDF.