Basic Text Formatting

Text plays a major role in any online site and the ability to quickly and easily format text is essential. This tutorial explains how to perform basic text formatting...

Bold and Italic Text

Bold and Italic text should be used to highlight important information within your content:

Normal text, *bold text* and _italic text_.

Result: Normal text, bold text and italic text.

Deleted and Inserted Text

If you want to show revisions on-screen, then using deleted and inserted text is an ideal way to show where changes have been made:

Normal text, +inserted text+ and -deleted text-.

Result: Normal text, inserted text and deleted text.

See Also: strike macro

Superscript and Subscript Text

^Superscript and _subscript text is useful for various forms of documentation, such as chemical or mathematical forumulas, etc:

Normal text, ^superscript text^ and ~subscript text~.

Result: Normal text, ^{superscript text} and _{subscript text}.

Citation

Citations are useful when you wish to display quotes from other people or publications:

Normal text, ??citation text??.

Result: Normal text, citation text.

Monospaced / Typewriter Text

Monospaced text is useful for displaying sections of computer code or other information that benefits from being displayed in a fixed-width font:

Normal text iii, {{monspaced text iii}}.

Result: Normal text iii, monspaced text iii.

See Also: noformat macro and code macro

Escaping Characters

There will be times when you want a character to be displayed, but it is mistaken for a text formatting character. For example, you want to show the question "How do I do XYZ?" as a citation:

??How do I do XYZ???

This would display as: How do I do XYZ?

As you can see, your question mark is appearing outside the quotes. To get round this problem, simply place a backslash character before your question mark (this process is known in techie-land as "escaping"):

??How do I do XYZ\???

This would display as: How do I do XYZ?

Hints and Tips

Use text formatting sparingly so that when it is used, it stands out more and is therefore more effective.

Text formatting can help text-to-speech software read your web pages in a more informative way.

Learn More

Frequently Asked Questions