Now you can bold, italicise and strikethrough your WhatsApp messages
By Pamela Chow
“Why can’t we format our messages?” This has been an age-old question plaguing humanity ever since the birth of Instant Messaging.
We kid. But today, a monumental milestone has been achieved.
That question has actually already been answered some time back – but that’s not the point, and it’s mostly jargon. More importantly, WhatsApp has introduced the option to finally format your messages with bold, italics and strikethroughs.
Here’s a quick guide:
Bold: Type your word between asterisks. Eg. *bold* = bold
Italics: Type your word between underscores. Eg. _italics_ = italics
Strikethrough: Type your word between tildes. Eg. ~strikethrough~ = strikethrough
When the Weekender team got wind of this information, we began putting it to good use.
Yes, you can strike through emojis and multiple words. However, you cannot strike through Mandarin characters (we tried, but we’d prefer to keep our excellent language skills a secret).
We’re going to be using the strikethrough to censor our emojis forever.
Also, note that the formatting won’t work if you don’t place a space in between the character or emoji before and after. For example, “_hello_!” will not turn up in italics.
Take it from us; this will save you from future embarrassment.
It was a noble sacrifice in the name of science and entertaining messaging.
This is how conversations should be – fun, creative and extra-sarcastic when the time calls for it. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility to be witty.
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