A plain text e-mail and the same text entered into a word processing document would be about the same file sizes.

Question

caominhim · Answer

a word processing document not only saves the text but also the formatting, a plain text email only saves the text

unklerhaukus · Answer

formatting takes memory

tester97 · Answer

UnkleRhaukus, Formatting doesn't take memory, it takes space. 
All program uses memory, with out memory, your computer wouldn't start up.

unklerhaukus · Answer

space is memory

caominhim · Answer

generally you refer to RAM as memory, which would not hold the data long term.  But I'm sure we can agree everyone meant the disk HDD/SSD

caominhim · Answer

* just HDD/SDD, no need for disk