Copy and paste fonts

A normal font changes how letters are drawn, not which letters they are. Paste text set in a fancy font into Instagram and the app receives plain A, B and C, which it draws in its own typeface, so the style is lost. Copy-and-paste fonts work the other way round. 𝗛 is not a bold H; it is a separate character, U+1D5DB, officially named “mathematical sans-serif bold capital H,” and the app has to show it as it is.

That's also why pasting as plain text doesn't remove them. Plain-text pasting strips formatting, and these characters aren't formatting. The catch is that the receiving app can't treat them as normal words either: to a search box, a hashtag or a screen reader, 𝗛𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗼 is five unusual characters, not the word hello.

Unicode added the maths letters so that a bold or script letter could carry its own meaning in a formula, and it recommends that they not be used as a substitute for styling ordinary text. Nothing stops you, but most of the drawbacks on this page come from using them for a job they weren't built for.

1. Type your text in the box at the top of the page and find the style you want.
2. Copy that version. On a phone, press and hold to select it and tap Copy; on a computer, press Ctrl+C, or Cmd+C on a Mac.
3. Open the app, press and hold inside the text field and tap Paste, or press Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac).
4. Look at the result before you save. Boxes or question marks mean your device can't show that style, so pick another.

Tip: Building a bio from several styles? Draft it in your phone's notes app first. You can mix styles line by line, see the whole thing at once, then copy and paste it into Instagram in one go.

On Android, Gboard's clipboard can hold several recent copies, which saves switching back and forth when you're pasting more than one style.

• Is your name, or what you do, still in plain letters somewhere? That's what people type into search.
• Are hashtags, @mentions, links and prices plain? Styled versions don't link, and numbers in some styles are hard to read.
• Is the styled part short? A word or a line reads as decoration. A whole caption in script or bold is tiring to read, and screen readers may spell it out character by character or skip it.
• Does it hold up on another phone? Each device uses its own fonts, so a style that looks crisp on yours can look thin, or turn into boxes, on someone else's.
• Are you mixing too many styles? One or two per bio is usually enough; more makes it hard to scan.