Fonts for Facebook posts

Facebook sets every post in its own plain typeface, and an ordinary post has no bold, italic or font options. Paste in text from a word processor in a fancy font and Facebook keeps the letters but drops the font.

Unicode styles get around that because the style isn't formatting at all. The 𝗚 at the start of a bold headline is its own character, “mathematical sans-serif bold capital G,” so Facebook stores and shows it exactly as it is, in the app and in a browser alike.

The four styles featured above are the ones that look most at home in a feed. They share the plain, sans-serif look of Facebook's own text, so a styled line reads as part of the post rather than something stuck on top of it.

Long posts are cut short after a few lines with a See more link, so the opening line has to work as a headline. A simple pattern: one styled line on top, plain details below, and a light touch of style for labels.

Look at what stays plain: the time, the address and how to pay. Those are the parts people read twice, copy or search for, and plain text is the version every phone, screen reader and search box handles.

Only one of the four featured styles changes digits. Bold has its own heavy numbers; italic, bold italic and small caps leave numbers as they are. Here is “Open 9 to 2” in each:

• Bold: 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝟵 𝘁𝗼 𝟮, with numbers that match the letters.
• Italic: 𝘖𝘱𝘦𝘯 9 𝘵𝘰 2, with upright numbers in a slanted line.
• Bold italic: 𝙊𝙥𝙚𝙣 9 𝙩𝙤 2, where the plain numbers look thin beside heavy letters.
• Small caps: ᴏᴘᴇɴ 9 ᴛᴏ 2, where the numbers stand taller than the letters.

That makes bold the safe choice for a price or a date in a headline. For anything people act on, such as a phone number, an order reference or an address, plain digits are better still. People copy them, and phones look for plain digits when they offer to call a number.

Facebook search, including the search bar inside a group, matches the letters people type. A post whose only mention of “garage sale” is 𝗴𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲 may not come up when a neighbour searches the group next week. If the post needs to be found, repeat the key words in plain text in the body.

Tags work the same way. To tag a friend or a Page, you type @ and pick them from a list, and that list is matched against plain names. Hashtags typed in styled letters don't connect to the real tag either.

Then there are readers who hear posts instead of seeing them. Facebook works with screen readers, but styled characters reach them as unusual symbols: some get read out one by one by their long Unicode names, and some are skipped. A headline in plain words with one styled word, or a styled line repeated in plain text below, keeps the post usable for them.

Tip: Already posted? Open the post's menu, choose Edit post and retype the styled line in plain text. The comments and reactions stay where they are.