Redacted meaning: What does redacted mean?
Redacted means information has been removed or blacked out of a document before it's shared, so the sensitive parts can't be read. Those black bars across a contract, court filing, or report are redactions.
A few related words, since they get mixed up:
- Redact is the verb: to take sensitive information out of a document before releasing it.
- Redaction is either the act of doing that, or the blacked-out section itself.
- Unredacted describes the original, with nothing removed. More on unredacted if you need it.
What people redact
Names, addresses, Social Security numbers, account and card numbers, dates of birth, signatures, and anything a privacy law like GDPR or HIPAA protects. Courts redact witness details, companies redact pricing, individuals redact account numbers off a statement before sending it on.
Covering text is not redacting it
This is the most common mistake. Drawing a black box over words only hides them. The text is still in the file, and anyone can select it, copy it, and read it. A document is only genuinely redacted once the underlying content has been removed. The quick way to tell: if you can highlight and copy the text under a black bar, it was never redacted, just covered. Here's why that keeps happening.
Where the word comes from
It traces back to the Latin redigere, roughly "to bring back" or "reduce." In modern use it means preparing a document for release by taking the sensitive parts out. It's also why you will hear redaction called sanitizing a document.
Doing it yourself
If you need to redact a PDF, use something that removes the content rather than covering it. Ours runs in your browser, so the file isn't uploaded, and what you remove is gone for good.
Related: what is a redacted document, what redacted means in court, unredacted meaning.