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> Of course, it can change formatting and page numbers, so it's worth being mindful of that.

The way this is phrased may give the impression that this is not much of a deal breaker in practical application as long as you just keep it in mind, but it really is.

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On the other hand, leaving the length of the original text unchanged can leak information. Imagine a person's full name is redacted but it's only 7 characters long in total. That massively cuts down on the possibilities and may be enough to unmask their identity if there are only a few thousand names that might plausibly be listed.

And that's why it would pay to design extra padding into fields such as names

It really depends on the context. If you’re talking about evidence in a court case where things are referred to by page number that’s one thing, but if you’re a public authority releasing some internal manual, there’s no need to keep the formatting identical, especially if you’re omitting entire sections.

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