diff --git a/src/libex01.py b/src/libex01.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97ac0d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/libex01.py
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+# file: read_plaintext.py
+# module to read plaintext from a file into a string variable.
+# Skips non-alphabetic characters and converts the rest to lower case
+
+import string
+
+def read_plaintext(file_path):
+    txt = ""
+    with open(file_path, "r") as _file:
+        for line in _file:
+            for char in line:
+                if char in string.ascii_letters:
+                    txt += char
+    return txt