LinkedIn Bold & Italic Formatter
Format LinkedIn posts with bold and italic text using Unicode tricks.
Written by Anil Gautam · Updated
How do the bold and italic markers work?
Text between double asterisks becomes bold, and text between single asterisks or single underscores becomes italic. Bold converts English letters and the digits 0 to 9; italic converts letters only, since Unicode has no italic digits. Shipped **v2.0** in *3 weeks* comes out as Shipped 𝐯𝟐.𝟎 in 3 𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑘𝑠, with the full stop and the 3 left plain. Accented letters and other scripts are never converted.
Bold markers can span several lines, while italic markers must open and close on the same line or the asterisks stay in the text. The B and I buttons wrap your selection in markers. With nothing selected, they insert the word text between markers at the cursor and select it so you can type over it. The count above the output treats each styled letter as one character. Some software counts it as two, because most styled letters are stored as two UTF-16 code units, so leave some margin near a length limit.
Why did my underscores or asterisks disappear?
Any two underscores on one line are read as italic markers. A link such as example.com/my_new_post_here comes out as example.com/my𝑛𝑒𝑤post_here, which no longer works, and email addresses or file names with two underscores break the same way. Check links in the output before copying, or add them in LinkedIn after pasting. Asterisks used for multiplication are also consumed: 2 * 3 * 4 loses both asterisks.
There is no bold italic. Writing ***word*** produces plain bold, and a bold phrase containing an asterisk, such as **a*b**, is left unconverted with all its markers showing. For other styles such as script or monospace, the Fancy Text Generator has 15 of them, and you can paste a styled phrase into your draft here.
What should stay in plain text on LinkedIn?
Styled letters are different characters from ordinary ones, so screen readers may spell them out or read their Unicode names, and anyone who copies your post copies the styled characters. Use bold for a short opening line or a few key words. Keep names, company names, hashtags and links in plain text. Conversion happens in your browser as you type, and nothing is posted to LinkedIn for you.
The conversion works in one direction. Styled text pasted back into the draft stays styled, because only plain letters between markers are converted, so keep your marked-up draft if you expect to edit the post later. Bullets and emoji pass through unchanged.