Bold, Italics and Underlines: How to Use Them Effectively?

Bold or strong

1. Important phrases.
2. Highlighting keywords.

Bold is used to highlight the text and capture the readers’ attention.

The bold tag is used for strong emphasis. When you feel like emphasising something, you need to first consider using italics, only use bold text if you are not satisfied by the emphasis the italics did to your text.

Some people, I call them over-emphasisers, have the habit of adding bold or italic tags to an entire paragraph or using bold italics together.

Don't be like them.

Because, if everything's emphasised, then nothing is emphasised.

Note: Some fonts have a lighter or darker version of bold. I don't tend to use them. I use bold or plain to keep it simple.

Italics Or Emphasis

Here are the common uses of italics.

1. Used to highlight quotes (some use blockquotes).
2. Used to highlight names of books, blogs, newspapers, etc.
3. Conversations or dialogues.
4. Imagination or story (One day I was walking… blah… blah…).
5. Foreign words.

Italics are used in the conversational type of sentences, dialogues, and names.

They are also used to emphasise a word in a sentence. When it comes to emphasis treat italics as a weaker emphasis when compared to bold. Use italics first, if it doesn't feel good – kick in the bold tag.

For example, “It is recommended not to drink coffee more than twice a day”.

While reading the above sentence, readers may filter out the word ‘not' if not italicised.

The italic words catch the eyes instantly when used with sans-serif typefaces like Georgia, Times New Roman, and others. They don't tend to stand out much relatively in the case of sans-serif fonts like Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, and others as the slant will be less .

Underline

Underline. Many times it stands out as a link!

It's too hard to differentiate links and underlined texts.

Underlining is more used in  textbooks  and newspapers and less on the web.

It's highly advised to keep the underline tag to a minimal usage in case of web writing. Instead of underlines, you can use bold or italics for emphasis.

Here are the situations in which you may use underlines.

1. Definition (SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, is…)
2. Linking – hyperlinks.

In the online world, it is common to assume that if a text is underlined it is a link. So, I would avoid using underline at all.

CAPS

Do you know that many writers and bloggers including me occasionally use CAPS to denote shouting or screaming in their blog posts?

1. While including acronyms (like SEO – Search Engine Optimisation)
2. While denoting shouting or screaming

Other than denoting the acronyms, you should totally avoid using CAPS. Except when it is needed to denote an extreme emotion.

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