How to write bold text on Facebook

Facebook sets its text in a plain sans-serif typeface, the kind without little feet on the letters. Sans bold, 𝗟𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝘁, looks like the bold Facebook already uses for people's names at the top of posts, so it reads as part of the page. Serif bold, 𝐋𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐭, has those small feet and looks more like a newspaper headline. It catches the eye more and blends in less.

Only letters and digits change. The comma in “Lost cat, please share” stays an ordinary comma, and so do $, £, ₹, @ and emoji, which is why a bold price still sits next to a plain currency sign.

An ordinary Facebook post or comment is plain text. No bold setting is saved with the words, so every method that depends on formatting falls flat:

• *Asterisks* around a word make it bold in WhatsApp. Facebook leaves them as they are, so readers see the asterisks.
• Bold copied from Word, Google Docs or an email arrives plain, because the formatting stays behind and only the letters are pasted.
• Ordinary post and comment boxes have no bold button, and neither does the bio editor.

Unicode bold gets around this because nothing is being formatted. 𝗕 is a separate character from B, in the same way that é is a separate character from e, so Facebook stores it and shows it like any other text.

You may read online that group admins get a formatting bar, with bold, headings and lists, when posting from a computer. Facebook's help pages don't describe it, so we can't confirm it. Either way, it doesn't reach ordinary posts, comments or your bio.

Local groups are full of long posts: lost pets, things for sale, road closures, school notices. Bolding every word makes them harder to read, not easier. Bolding a headline and a few labels lets people jump to the detail they need, while the details themselves stay plain.

Tip: When there's news, edit the post and add a new bold first line, such as 𝗨𝗣𝗗𝗔𝗧𝗘: 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗮𝗳𝗲, so people stop sharing an appeal that's already over.

Unicode's bold sets cover A to Z, a to z and the digits 0 to 9, plus Greek, which this generator leaves alone. Anything else passes through unchanged. An accented letter stays thin in the middle of a bold word, so “Café abierto” comes out as 𝗖𝗮𝗳é 𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗼, and there is no bold version at all of Devanagari, Bengali, Cyrillic or Chinese characters.

If you post in Hindi, Bengali, Russian or another language with its own script, get emphasis from the layout instead. Put the key line first, give it a line of its own, or start it with an emoji such as 📍 or ⚠️ that draws the eye.

Some screen readers announce Unicode bold one character at a time using each character's full name, so 𝗟𝗼𝘀𝘁 can come out as “mathematical sans-serif bold capital L, mathematical sans-serif bold small o…”. Others skip the characters. A bold headline costs a listener a few seconds; a post written entirely in bold can lose them completely.

• Bold a headline and a few labels, never the whole post.
• Keep phone numbers, addresses, emails and links plain, since copying a bold one copies the wrong characters.
• In someone else's comment thread, a bold reply can read as a raised voice. Save bold for your own posts.
• Give each post one bold idea. If three things are bold, none of them stands out.