Nice and simple tip from Justin, but there’s actually a couple of other ways to do this if you don’t want to go the TextExpander route: the two I use are LaunchBar and Keyboard Maestro.
### LaunchBar
Dead simple, just activate `Clipboard History` in your LaunchBar preferences and check the box `As Plain Text`, setup your shortcut to invoke clipboard history and you are done. I am using `OPT+Commoand+\` and `Command+\` on my machine — makes for copying and pasting plain text pretty fast.
### Keyboard Maestro
Of course if you really want to be fast about it, you can use a macro in Keyboard Maestro that strips formatting. Actually this is a default macro that comes with Keyboard Maestro — not something I made. The shortcut I have set for it is `Shift+Command+V` and boom, no formatting. In case you deleted the macro, just go to `File > Import to Macro Library` in Keyboard Maestro, close the file chooser dialog that pops up and find the macro to re-add it to your library.
I think you’ll be amazed at how handy plain text formatted clipboard items really are.