What Does Redacted Mean?

Redacted means that parts of a document, such as names or numbers, were hidden or removed before the document was shared or published. The rest of the document stays readable. You usually see the hidden parts as black bars or as a label such as [REDACTED].

The verb is "redact", and the act is "redaction". Dictionary.com defines redact as "to edit (text) so as to remove or hide confidential or sensitive information." Cornell's Legal Information Institute calls redaction "the retroactive editing of a document to remove confidential material."

What does redacted text look like?

Redacted text usually has one of three forms. The samples below are made up. They do not come from a real document.

You can test the black bars in this sample. Select them, copy them and paste them into a text editor. No hidden words come with them, because the bars are empty.

Redaction vs. deletion: what is the difference?

Both take information out of a document. The difference is what the reader can see afterward.

• Redaction keeps the rest of the document and shows that something is missing. The reader can see where the bar or label is.
• Deletion takes the words or the whole file away. Without a mark, the reader cannot tell that anything was there.

A third case causes problems: text that is only covered. A black box on top of the words looks like a redaction, but the words can still be in the file. In January 2019, Vice reported that readers of a court filing in the Paul Manafort case could read blacked-out parts by copying the paragraph and pasting it somewhere else. The article says that the exact cause was not known.

What do unredacted and heavily redacted mean?

• Unredacted means that nothing is hidden, so the document shows its full text. One document can exist in both forms. For example, under Rule 5.2 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a person who makes a redacted filing can also file an unredacted copy under seal.
• Heavily redacted means that much of the document is hidden, such as whole paragraphs or pages. The phrase tells you how much is hidden. It does not tell you why.

What does [redacted link] mean?

A label such as [redacted link] means that someone removed a URL before the text was shared. The label does not tell you where the link went. If you need the link, ask the person who shared the text.

What does redacted mean in a court document?

In a court document, redacted means that private details were taken out of the version of the filing that you can read. The information is hidden from that version. It is not always gone from the court's record.

In US federal civil cases, Rule 5.2 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure limits what a filing can show, unless the court orders otherwise:

• Social Security and taxpayer-identification numbers: only the last four digits.
• Birth dates: only the year.
• Names of minors: only the initials.
• Financial-account numbers: only the last four digits.

Rule 49.1 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure has the same limits for criminal cases and adds one: a home address can show only the city and state. These two rules are for US federal courts.

So a partly hidden number or a child shown as initials can be a redaction, even when you see no black bar.

Redacted is also not the same as sealed. Under Rule 5.2, a court can order a filing to be made under seal without redaction, and it can later unseal the filing or order a redacted version for the public record. A person who makes a redacted filing can also file an unredacted copy under seal, and the court keeps that copy as part of the record.

A black bar tells you only that something was hidden from your copy. By itself, it does not tell you what the words were or why they were hidden.

What does redacted mean on a police report?

On a police report, redacted means that the agency hid some details before it released the copy that you have. The rest of the report stays readable.

The law that applies depends on which agency holds the report. The federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) does not apply to records held by state or local government agencies. Those agencies use their state's public access laws, so the rules for a city police report differ by state.

For federal records, the FOIA FAQ says that an agency "will redact, or black out, any information protected from disclosure by one of the FOIA's nine exemptions." Exemption 7 covers law enforcement records. It applies, for example, when a release could:

• interfere with enforcement proceedings,
• be an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,
• disclose the identity of a confidential source, or
• endanger the life or physical safety of a person.

The same law says that the amount of information deleted and the exemption used must be shown on the released part of the record, unless this would harm an interest that the exemption protects. That is what a code such as "(b)(7)(C)" on a black bar means: it points to the part of the law, in this case the part about personal privacy.

State laws have their own lists. Two examples:

• Florida: the Florida Attorney General explains that an agency must redact exempt information and release the rest of the record. The exempt information includes Social Security numbers and the identities of confidential informants.
• California: under Government Code section 7923.615, the name of a victim of certain listed crimes, such as sex offenses, can be withheld at the victim's request.

This article explains what the word means. It is not legal advice. For a question about a specific document or case, ask a lawyer or the agency or court that released it.

Where does the word redact come from?

Dictionary.com dates the word to 1350–1400 and traces it to the Latin redactus, from redigere, "to lead back". Its first listed meaning is still "to put into suitable literary form; revise; edit." The meaning in this article is the one that you see on released documents.

How can you redact a file and check the result?

If you must hide information yourself, remove it. Do not only cover it. Three of our free tools do this work:

• Text Redactor: paste text and get a copy with labels or blocks in place of the personal data. The original words are not hidden underneath.
• PDF Redactor: makes a new PDF from images of the pages, with the bars already in them. The text under each bar is not in the new file.
• Redaction Checker: tests a redacted PDF for text under black bars, redactions that were not applied, earlier versions and metadata.

These tools run in your browser. Your files stay on your device or secure network and never touch our servers. You can read the details in our privacy policy.

No automatic tool is perfect. Read every page before you share a file. The Redaction Checker reads the text layer of a PDF, so it cannot read text inside a scanned image.