Bold and italic text on LinkedIn and Instagram: the hidden problems

LinkedIn, Instagram and X do not offer bold or italic in their text boxes. Yet posts appear with 𝗯𝗼𝗹𝗱 headlines and 𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘤 phrases. These are not formatted letters: they are different characters from a block of Unicode designed for mathematical notation, which happen to look like bold or italic letters. That trick works visually and has real costs.

How it works

Unicode includes complete alphabets of mathematical bold, italic, bold italic, script and other styles, so that equations can distinguish, say, a bold x from an ordinary x. A formatter swaps each normal letter for its mathematical look-alike. The LinkedIn Post Formatter does exactly this, along with bullets and line breaks that survive posting.

The problems

• Screen readers. Assistive software may read each symbol as “mathematical bold small b”, spell it letter by letter, or skip it. A bold headline can become unintelligible for blind and partially sighted readers.
• Search. A search for “marketing” does not match 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴. Words in Unicode bold are effectively invisible to the platform's own search and to anyone searching your profile.
• Character limits. Each of these symbols is stored as two units in many systems, and some platforms count them as two characters. The Character Counter warns when text contains multi-unit characters.
• Missing glyphs. Some devices and fonts do not have every symbol and show empty boxes.
• Copying. Text copied out of a post keeps the symbols, which then look odd in emails and documents and break spell-check.

How to use it responsibly

• Limit it to a short headline or one key phrase, never whole paragraphs.
• Never put essential information, such as dates, prices, names or links, only in Unicode bold.
• Do not use it for words people might search for, such as your job title or skills.
• Avoid script, double-struck and other decorative styles; they are the hardest to read.
• Use structure instead: short paragraphs, line breaks and simple bullets do most of what bold is used for, without the downsides.

Where real formatting exists

LinkedIn articles, as opposed to posts, have a proper editor with real bold and headings. Emails, documents and most website editors support genuine formatting too. Use Unicode styling only where there is no alternative.

Undoing it

If you need to turn styled text back into normal letters, for example after copying a post into a document, retyping the styled words is often fastest for a short phrase. Applying Unicode normalisation (NFKC) in a code editor or script also maps most mathematical letters back to ordinary ones.

For formatting LinkedIn posts in general, see how to format a LinkedIn post. For hidden characters that cause similar trouble, see removing invisible characters.