Text messaging has become more than just a method of communication. This is how most people nowadays like to stay connected with the people around them. Therefore, a simple message may not convey what people want to say.

Most text messaging programs only allow you to send simple texts—nothing fancy. WhatsApp is an exception in this case, as users have the option to format text before sending. You can bold words in a paragraph that you want to emphasize, or choose italics to make text stand out, and more.

How to format your WhatsApp texts?

There are two options: use your phone’s built-in features to select bold, strikethrough, or enter special characters around the text you want to convert.

To see the formatting menu on your Android device, if you’re using a phone with built-in functionality, tap and hold on the word you type. To select multiple words, press the buttons on either side of the selection to expand it. Then, choose one of four formatting options: bold, italic, strikethrough, or monospaced font.

If you don’t see them all, click the three-dot button on the right and it will give you a full list of formatting options. Or, if you’re using iOS, double-click the text you entered. Then select BIU and choose what you want to do, which is bold, italic, strikethrough, or monospace.

On the other hand, if you want to format text using special characters, you need to do the following −

To italicize text, add underlines on both sides of the text: _text_ To make text or a paragraph bold, add asterisks on either side of the word you choose: *text To use the strikethrough feature in text, add in Surround the content of the message with tildes: ~Text~ To have a constant-width message, place three backticks on both sides: “`Text”` You can also add quotes, bullets, and other options on WhatsApp.

To reuse these characters in the same text, make sure to place the special characters for each formatting style in the correct location. One way to do this correctly is to mirror the characters on both ends. For example-

*_italics and bold_*~*bold and strikethrough*~_~strikethrough and italics~_