@agiledoc
September 3, 2019, 11:23am EDT
Sometimes you want to add a little emphasis to certain words in your messages. If you’re a WhatsApp user, you can add four types of emphasis, either inline or from a menu.
The types of formatting you can apply in a WhatsApp message are bold, italics, strikethrough , and monospacing. To manually apply the formatting, you need to place a particular punctuation mark on either side of a word (or series of words):
- Bold: Place an asterisk on either side (*bold*).
- Italicize: Place an underscore on either side (_italic_).
- Strikethrough: Place a tilde on either side (
).
When you send your message, the text will be displayed with the chosen formatting.
If you’re not big on typing—especially if you want to use monospace (the back tick is often hidden away on smartphone keyboards)—you can also use the built-in formatting menu.
Long press the word you want to format and the menu will appear. In the case of Android, the Bold option will already be visible. To access the other formatting options, tap the three dots on the right side of the menu or the BIU option on the menu for iPhone.
This will display the other formatting options for you to choose from.
Choose your desired formatting option—we’re going to pick monospace—and the relevant punctuation marks will be added automatically.
Tap the send button that looks like an arrow, and your message will be sent with the formatting applied.
Additionally, you can add multiple formats to messages by using any combination of bold, italic, and strikethrough.
The one caveat is monospace. This limitation applies because the formatting option allows you to include asterisks, underscores, or tildes in a message without them changing the look of the text.
WhatsApp allows you to format text inside your messages. Please note, there’s no option to disable this feature.
Italic
To italicize your message, place an underscore on both sides of the text:
To bold your message, place an asterisk on both sides of the text:
Strikethrough
To strikethrough your message, place a tilde on both sides of the text:
Monospace
To monospace your message, place three backticks on both sides of the text:
Note:
Alternatively, you can use shortcuts on Android and iPhone.
Android: Tap and hold the text you’re entering in the text field, then choose Bold, Italic, or More
. Tap More
to choose Strikethrough or Monospace.
iPhone: Tap the text you’re entering in the text field > Select or Select All > B_I_U. Then, choose Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, or Monospace.
Depending on the exact message you want to pass on, you can format WhatsApp messages that you wish to send out by typing certain characters in your text or use its inbuilt settings. You can apply in a WhatsApp message bold, italics, monospacing, change the font and even cross out words to emphasize certain words or phrases as well as create an impression.
This feature is available for both iOS and Android devices, however, make sure your WhatsApp is up to date to get the most out of formatting text in your chats.
How to format WhatsApp messages
To format WhatsApp messages, you have to type special characters before and after the text in your message.
Bold font in WhatsApp
You can format your text partly or fully in bold before sending it to a recipient on WhatsApp. Open WhatsApp and open a chat where you want to send your message.
Type a message as usual and place an asterisk (*bold*) on either side of the message that you want to bold. For instance: *sautitech* would end up as; sautitech. Tap on the send option to send the message and it will appear bold on both your side and the receiver’s side.
Make text Italic
You can also make the text italic, italicizing a text is useful when you want to emphasize on an important part. You can italicize words by placing an underscore sign (_Italic_) on either side of the text. For instance, in the message: _Up-to date with sautitech news_ would end up as; Up-to date with sautitech news.
Tap on the send option to send the message to appear in italics before you and the intended message recipient
Strike through message
Sometimes you want you cross out words to represent a correction or iteration in a message. To do this, place a tilde (
) on both sides of the part of the message that you want to strikethrough. Then tap on send.
Change Font
WhatsApp also supports an alternative font known as Monospace. Monospace font can has to be changed individually for every message, since there’s no global setting in WhatsApp to change the font for texts.
To change the font, place three back quotes or back ticks on either side (“`How are you today?“`) of the message you want to have a different font. Then, tap on send message. Ensure that you do not leave space between the symbols and text.
Combine formatting options
You can also be able to combine different formatting styles for one word or a sentence, where by you can make the sentence bold, italic or strikethrough and even change the font to Monospace for the same text fragment. To do this, place the word in the respective symbols, making sure you maintain their order from beginning
The symbol that is entered first on the word or sentence where you want to combine formatting option will be entered last after the word or sentence.
Format WhatsApp messages using inbuilt settings
You can use the built-in settings, in case you don’t want to type the shortcuts to format your massages.
On Android, long-press or tap and hold on the text, then drag the selectors from beginning and ending to highlight more words or characters you want for appropriate formatting and tap on the three(3) dot menu that pops up to choose the formatting type you want to apply to the text.
Same as on Android, you can do the same for iOS, double-tap the word to see the selection, then tap the “B/U” item from the contextual menu to choose your formatting option. Formatting characters will automatically apply for your selected attribute, then choose an option from bold, italic, strikethrough, and monospace to be applied.
We teach you how to format your WhatsApp messages. Use bold and cursive fonts as well as cross out parts of the text, among other options.
WhatsApp offers you an infinity of possibilities . You can easily send text messages to your friends and family. What a lot of people may not know is that you can format your WhatsApp messages as well. That’s right, you can use bold and cursive fonts as well as cross out messages.
Formatting your WhatsApp messages is super easy. You can choose when you want to change the format and you don’t need to install any other app. Change the format of the entire message, just a sentence, or even a single word. There are a bunch of different possibilities.
Bold Font
Bold font helps you highlight the most important part of the message to makes sure that others pay special attention to those words. You don’t need to know any secret tricks, just a couple of text signs.
In order to write WhatsApp messages using a bold font, you have to type that message in between aesthetics. You can use the bold font for just one word, a sentence, or the entire message. For example: *bold font*
The message in bold font would look something like this:
Cursive Font
You can use a cursive font , much like you would a bold font. You can use it for a single word within your message or the entire message. To do so, type an underscore symbol before the word or message and another one just after. For example _cursive font_
A message using the cursive font would look something like this:
Cross out
You can cross out a WhatsApp message if you’d like. The message appears legible but crossed out by a line. This feature helps you rectify or correct something you’ve previously said. Just keep in mind that crossing out the message doesn’t make it disappear.
In order to cross out a WhatsApp message , all you have to do is use tilde symbols (
) on your keyboard. Type a tilde symbol before the word or phrase and another one after. The message between the tilde signs will be crossed out. Keep in mind that the tilde sign might not appear on the first symbol and numbers screen of your smartphone. It’s very possible that you might have to access the second symbol screen.
A crossed out text would look like this:
crossed out message
Monospace
Monospace or fixed-pitch text is one where all the letters occupy the same horizontal space. As a result, you’ll see that there is more space between each letter than a normal WhatsApp message (as you can see in the following image).
In order to type a monospace message, whether it’s a sentence or just a word, you’ll have to type the message between three accent marks (‘) . In other words, your message would look like this: “`monospace text“`.
What about underlining?
We still can’t underline WhatsApp messages just yet. For the time being, we’ll have be content with the rest of the formats available. It’s very possible that the app adds new formatting options in the near future.
Combine formats
You can also use bold and cursive fonts, bold and cross out, or cursive and monospace in your WhatsApp messages. To do so, all you have to do is combine symbols but they do need to be in the right order. Basically, you have to respect the hierarchy and the order.
In other words, if you want to apply a bold and cross out format, you’ll have to type this:
*bold and crossed out message*
*bold and crossed out message
*. Follow the same symbol hierarchy when you start and end the message.
You can also apply all kinds of formats to your WhatsApp messages. In other words, you can type an entire sentence using a bold font but only one word in cursive, or an entire sentence in cursive and only one word crossed out. You can mix and match the formats to convey your message.
Change the font size
You can also change the font in your WhatsApp message although this change will only be applied to your screen. If you want to enlarge the font in your WhatsApp messages, you can do so by following a few simple steps.
Enter WhatsApp, tap on the three dots located on the upper right side of your screen and enter the settings. Tap on Chats > Font size > Small/Medium/Large . You can enlarge or reduce the size of the font on your screen.
WhatsApp for Android available in Uptodown | Download
If you are a WhatsApp user, the types of formatting you can apply during a chat are bold, italics, strikethrough, and monospacing. In order to apply the formatting manually, you would like to put specific punctuation on either side of a word (or series of words). If you do not know how to format your WhatsApp messages then you are in the right place. In order to learn about formatting WhatsApp messages, keep reading this article till the end.
WhatsApp allows you to format text inside your chat messages. This feature is available by default in WhatsApp thus there’s no option to disable this feature.
Italic :
To make your chat words italic simply put an underscore (_) behind the word and also at the end of it. For e.g. _hello_. This will make the word italic like this “hello“.
Bold :
To make your chat words bold simply put an asterisk (*) behind the word and also at the end of it. For e.g. *hello*. This will make the word bold like this “hello“.
Strikethrough :
In order to make your chat words strikethrough simply put a tilde (
) behind the word and also at the end of it. For e.g.
. This will make a strike through the word like this “hello“.
Monospace :
To monospace your WhatsApp message, just place three backticks on both sides of the text or word as shown below-
“`text“`
Note: Alternatively, you can also use shortcuts on Android and iPhone.
Android: Tap and hold the text you’re entering in the text field, then choose Bold, Italic, or More options icon. Tap the More options icon to choose Strikethrough or Monospace.
iPhone: Tap the text > Select or Select All > B_I_U. Then, choose Bold, Strikethrough, Italic, or Monospace.
WhatsApp allows you to format text inside your messages. Please note, there’s no option to disable this feature.
Italic
To italicize your message, place an underscore on both sides of the text:
To bold your message, place an asterisk on both sides of the text:
Strikethrough
To strikethrough your message, place a tilde on both sides of the text:
Monospace
To monospace your message, place three backticks on both sides of the text:
Note:
Alternatively, you can use shortcuts on Android and iPhone.
Android: Tap and hold the text you’re entering in the text field, then choose Bold, Italic, or More
. Tap More
to choose Strikethrough or Monospace.
iPhone: Tap the text you’re entering in the text field > Select or Select All > B_I_U. Then, choose Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, or Monospace.
WhatsApp allows you to format text inside your messages. Please note, there’s no option to disable this feature.
Italic
To italicize your message, place an underscore on both sides of the text:
To bold your message, place an asterisk on both sides of the text:
Strikethrough
To strikethrough your message, place a tilde on both sides of the text:
Monospace
To monospace your message, place three backticks on both sides of the text:
Note:
Alternatively, you can use shortcuts on Android and iPhone.
Android: Tap and hold the text you’re entering in the text field, then choose Bold, Italic, or More
. Tap More
to choose Strikethrough or Monospace.
iPhone: Tap the text you’re entering in the text field > Select or Select All > B_I_U. Then, choose Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, or Monospace.
Sometimes you want to add a little emphasis to certain words in your messages. If you’re a WhatsApp user, you can add four types of emphasis, either inline or from a menu.
The types of formatting you can apply in a WhatsApp message are bold, italics, strikethrough , and monospacing. To manually apply the formatting, you need to place a particular punctuation mark on either side of a word (or series of words):
- Bold: Place an asterisk on either side (*bold*).
- Italicize: Place an underscore on either side (_italic_).
- Strikethrough: Place a tilde on either side (
).
When you send your message, the text will be displayed with the chosen formatting.
If you’re not big on typing—especially if you want to use monospace (the back tick is often hidden away on smartphone keyboards)—you can also use the built-in formatting menu.
Long press the word you want to format and the menu will appear. In the case of Android, the Bold option will already be visible. To access the other formatting options, tap the three dots on the right side of the menu or the BIU option on the menu for iPhone.
This will display the other formatting options for you to choose from.
Choose your desired formatting option—we’re going to pick monospace—and the relevant punctuation marks will be added automatically.
Tap the send button that looks like an arrow, and your message will be sent with the formatting applied.
Additionally, you can add multiple formats to messages by using any combination of bold, italic, and strikethrough.
The one caveat is monospace. This limitation applies because the formatting option allows you to include asterisks, underscores, or tildes in a message without them changing the look of the text.
Unless you’re a WhatsApp pro user, you may be surprised to know that there are text formatting options that you can apply to your messages. Markdown characters can help you emphasize certain words or phrases by making them italicized or bold, and it’ll even let you cross out words and change the font. It’s one of those nice touches that isn’t available in most other messaging apps.
The feature is available for both iOS and Android devices, and there are minuscule differences between the two. In older WhatsApp versions, Android phones had more options that an iPhone would, but now it’s pretty much the same across the board. So make sure you’ve updated to the latest version of WhatsApp for Android or iOS to get the most out of formatting text in your chats.
Using Markdown for Formatting
For both Android and iOS devices, WhatsApp lets you format your messages with italics, bold, and strikethrough text just by typing special characters before and after the text in your message. The use of these special characters is referred to as markdown. You can even turn the regular font into a monospaced font with the right syntax. Here’s how you do it:
- Type an underscore ( _ ) on both sides of a word or phrase to italicize it. Example: _word_ would end up as word.
- Type an asterisk ( * ) on both sides of a word or phrase to make it bold. Example: *word* would end up as word.
- Type a tilde (
) on both sides of a word or phrase to cross out the text. Example:
would add a strikethrough to it.
WhatsApp for both mobile operating systems displays a live preview of text attributes as you type, so you can see precisely how messages will show up in their formatted state when sent. And you can combine italics, bold, and strikethroughs if you want, but if you apply monospace to any other formatted text, it will cancel it out since monospace removes all formatting when the font changes.
Using the Contextual Menu for Formatting Instead
In addition to the markdown formatting option, both the Android and iOS app contains a simple contextual menu where you can select bold, italic, strikethrough, or monospace. On Android, long-press your target word then drag the beginning and ending selectors to highlight more words or characters if needed. On iOS, you can do that too, but you can also double-tap the word instead to see the selection.
Next, on Android, tap vertical ellipsis from the contextual menu that pops up, then select your formatting option. On iOS, tap the “BIU” item from the contextual menu, then choose your formatting option. The markdown characters will automatically apply for your selected attribute.
As you can see, formatting text messages is straightforward in WhatsApp, whether you choose markdown or the contextual menu. And you can still use underscores, asterisks, tildes, and grave accents by themselves. If there is only one character for each, it’ll show up as that character.
Using Multiple Characters Without Applying Formatting
There is no way to turn of WhatsApp’s text formatting with these markdown characters. If you need to show two of the same characters in the message but don’t want to change the format, there aren’t many options.
For bold, italic, and strikethrough, you can use one or all of them to format the entire message, then add a character in between where you need them as necessary. It’s not the best workaround, but that’s where the monospaced text comes in. Use that, and none of the other characters for bold, italic, or strikethrough will work, letting you place as many of those markdown characters as you want without applying those special attributes.
This article was produced during Gadget Hacks’ special coverage on texting, instant messaging, calling, and audio/video chatting with your smartphone. Check out the whole Chat series.
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Cover photo, screenshots, and GIFs by Justin Meyers/Gadget Hacks
