To display "Some Text", use the command:

echo Some Text

This will output the string Some Text followed by a new line.

To display the strings On and Off (case insensitive) or the empty string, use a ( instead of white-space:

echo(ON
echo(
echo(off

This will output:

ON

off

It is also common to use echo. to output a blank line, but please see the remarks for why this is not the best idea.

To display text without including a CR/LF, use the following command:

<nul set/p=Some Text

This command will attempt to set the variable called the empty string to the user input following a prompt. The nul file is redirected to the command with <nul, so the command will give up as soon as it tries to read from it and only the prompt string will be left. Because the user never typed a new line, there is no linefeed.

The echo setting determines whether command echoing is on or off. This is what a sample program looks like with command echoing on (default):

C:\Windows\System32>echo Hello, World!
Hello, World!

C:\Windows\System32>where explorer
C:\Windows\System32\explorer.exe

C:\Windows\System32>exit

This is what it looks like with echo off:

Hello, World!
C:\Windows\System32\explorer.exe

Getting and Setting

To get (display) the echo setting, use echo with no parameters:

> echo
ECHO is on.

To set the echo setting, use echo with on or off:

> echo off

> echo
ECHO is off.

> echo on

> echo
ECHO is on.

Note that with these examples, the prompt has been represented by >. When changing the echo setting, the prompt will appear and disappear, but that makes for unclear examples.

Note that it is possible to prevent a command from being echoed even when echo is on, by placing an @ character before the command.

Quotes will be output as-is:

echo "Some Text"

"Some Text"

Comment tokens are ignored:

echo Hello World REM this is not a comment because it is being echoed!

Hello World REM this is not a comment because it is being echoed!

However, echo will still output variables - see Variable Usage - and special characters still take effect:

echo hello && echo world

hello
world

Ways to create a file with the echo command:

echo. > example.bat (creates an empty file called "example.bat")

echo message > example.bat (creates example.bat containing "message")
echo message >> example.bat (adds "message" to a new line in example.bat)
(echo message) >> example.bat (same as above, just another way to write it)

Output to path

A little problem you might run into when doing this:

echo Hello how are you? > C:\Users\Ben Tearzz\Desktop\example.bat

(This will NOT make a file on the Desktop, and might show an error message)

But then how do we do it? Well it's actually extremely simple... When typing a path or file name that has a space included in it's name, then remember to use "quotes"

echo Hello how are you? > "C:\Users\Ben Tearzz\Desktop\example.bat"
(This will make a file on MY Desktop)

But what if you want to make a file that outputs a new file?

echo message > file1.bat > example.bat

(This is NOT going to output:
"message > file1.bat" to example.bat

Then how do we do this?

echo message ^> file1.bat > example.bat

(This will output: 
"message > file1.bat" to example.bat

Same goes for other stuff in batch

If you haven't learned what variables and statements are, then you most likely won't understand the following: click here to learn about variables | click here to learn about "if" statements

Variables:

set example="text"
echo %example% > file.bat
(This will output "text" to file.bat)

if we don't want it to output "text" but just plain %example% then write:

echo ^%example^% > file.bat
(This will output "%example%" to file.bat)

else statements:

else = ||
if ^%example^%=="Hello" echo True || echo False > file.bat

(This will output:
if %example%=="Hello" echo True

to output the whole line we write:

if ^%example^%=="Hello" echo True ^|^| echo False > file.bat

This will output:
if %example%=="Hello" echo True || echo False

If the variable is equal to "Hello" then it will say "True", else it will say "False"

@echo off prevents the prompt and contents of the batch file from being displayed, so that only the output is visible. The @ makes the output of the echo off command hidden as well.

In the following example echo on will take effect after the end of the brackets context is reached:

@echo off
(
    echo on
    echo ##
)
echo $$

In order to "activate" echo on in a brackets context (including FOR and IF commands) you can use FOR /f macro :

@echo off
setlocal

:: echo on macro should followed by the command you want to execute with echo turned on
set "echo_on=echo on&for %%. in (.) do"

(
  %echo_on% echo ###
)