How to Use Bold, Italics and Strikethrough in WhatsApp Messages
Special Characters You can also format your WhatsApp messages using special characters. To do this, you need to put the text you want to format within specific characters:
Bold: text
Italic: text
Strikethrough: text
Monospace: text
How to Format Text in WhatsApp
Most messaging apps just let you send plain text, nothing fancy.
WhatsApp is an exception in that you can format the text before you send it. It supports bold, italic, strikethrough, and monospace.
There are two ways: use your phone’s built-in functionality to select Bold, Strikethrough, etc.,
or type special characters around the text you want to be formatted.
Note that the special characters must be placed directly before and after the text you want to format, with no spaces. For example, if you want to bold the text “Hello World”, you would type Hello World. Top 10 Games for Android
Visual Editor
This method is easy. No cheat codes to remember!
Tap-and-hold (Android) or double-tap (iOS) a word you’ve typed to reveal a formatting menu. To select more than one word, use the buttons on either side of the selection to expand it.
On Android, tap one of the formatting options: Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, or Monospace. If you don’t see all of them, select the three-dotted button on the right.
On iOS and iPadOS, choose BIU and then Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, or Monospace.
If you’re using WhatsApp from a computer, you won’t see the effect until you send the message. Mobile users will see the text change immediately.
Formatting Shortcut
The manual method is a little faster if you’re a quick typer or if you need to apply the format to a large set of text. But, you’ll have to memorize the formatting rules.
The way it works is by typing a special character or set of characters before and after the word(s) you want to format.
For example, you can strikethrough WhatsApp text by surrounding it with a tilde, such as ~words~ or ~something like this~.
Here’s the whole list (tip: some of these work in the Facebook Messenger app, too):
| WhatsApp Formatting Rules | ||
|---|---|---|
| Format | What to Type | Example |
| Italic | Underscore | _text_ |
| Bold | Asterisk | *text* |
| Strikethrough | Tilde | ~text~ |
| Monospace | Backticks | “`text“` |
To double-up on these styles, make sure the special characters are in the correct place.
It’s easy to mistype the order and wind up with a different look than you intended. One way to get this right is to mirror the characters on either end.
Here are some examples:
- *_italic and bold_*
- ~*bold and strikethrough*~
- _~strikethrough and italic~_
