It can seem complicated to use Discord if you’re not familiar with how it works. If you’ve seen your friends and members of your group use discord text formatting tricks, you may have seen bold text and even coloured fonts. How is Discord’s formatting done, and can anyone use it, or is it restricted to a few users?
We’ve put together a guide on Discord text formatting below to help you show off with cool fonts and avoid embarrassment. You will learn everything there is to know about bolding, italicizing, striking through, and underlining text in Discord. You can get advanced coloring options on Discord.
Discord Markdown – Understanding Discord Text Formatting Engine
The text in Discord is formatted using Markdown. Text in forums or readme files can be formatted in Markdown, which is commonly used by text editors to convert plain text into rich text.
The Markdown language is lightweight and intuitive to read and write. It’s available in text-only and uses simple symbols for bolding, italicizing, strikethrough, and underlining, so the Discord developers used it in the app. The Discord markdown formatting system is very straightforward to use, with only a few points to remember.
Discord text formatting – how to bold in discord
1. Discord bold text – How to bold in Discord
The bold option is useful for making the text darker to emphasize it. It functions similarly to the b> or strong> tags in HTML.
You can bold text by placing two asterisks (*) at the beginning and end of it.
You can generate the asterisk symbol by pressing ‘Shift + 8’, which is located on the ‘8’ key.
Discord allows you to bold text when you hold down the ‘Ctrl + B’ key on your PC or the ‘Cmd + B’ key on your Mac.
You will create a block of text similar to the one below.
**Bold text** in Discord
2. Discord text italics – How to italicize in Discord?
In discord text formatting, the Discord Text italic option is to be used when you want to emphasize the text by making the letters slant. Similar to the <i> or <em> tag in HTML.
The text is italicized by adding an asterisk (*) at the beginning and the end of the discord text.
While making text bold, two asterisks must be added at the beginning, and the end of the text, whereas the italicizing text in Discord markdown requires only one asterisk.
In a manner similar to the one described above, you would need to press ‘Shift + 8’ once on either end of the text to italicize it.
While using Discord on the PC, you can also select the text and hold down the ‘Ctrl + I’ key (Windows) or the ‘Cmd + I’ key (Mac) to italicize the text.
You will create a block of text similar to the one below.
*Italicized text* in Discord
3. Discord strikethrough – How to make Discord text strikethrough
If you want a word or sentence to look like it has been crossed out, you use strikethrough. A horizontal line runs through the center of the text. A strike> tag in HTML is equivalent to this.
Strikethrough Text On Discord, you can strikethrough text by using the tilde key (~~).
Strikethrough text on Discord the entire text by pressing the tilde key at both the start and end.
This symbol appears on standard keyboards adjacent to the number ‘1’ key, on the same key as the backtick.
Press and hold ‘Shift + `’ twice to generate ‘~~’
You will create a block of text similar to the one below.
~~Strikethrough text~~ in Discord
4. Discord underline – How to underline in Discord
In discord text formatting, underline text to make it stand out, similar to the <u> tag in HTML.
Underline Text in Discord: You can underline a text by placing two underscores (_) at both the start and end of each line.
The underscore (_) is usually pressed at the same key as the hyphen (-).
You can underline text by pressing and holding ‘Shift + -‘ twice.
If you are using Discord on a PC, you can also select the text and hold down ‘Ctrl + U’ (Windows) or ‘Cmd + U’ (Mac) to underline it.
You will create a block of text similar to the one below.
__Underlined text__ in Discord
Use of international keyboard layouts
However, although the standard English layout has the asterisk (*) key right beside the ‘8’ key, the tilde (~) and backtick (`) keys on the same key, and hyphens and underscores at the same place, this format is not used everywhere.
The positions of these symbols also vary by keyboard, so you’ll need to make adjustments depending on which one you’re using. The following table illustrates the different keyboard positions of ‘*’ around the world:
Belgium (French): Shift+$ (key to the right of ^¨)
France (French): * (key to the right of ù%)
Switzerland (French): Shift+3
Germany (German): Shift+[+] (key to the right of Ü)
Italy (Italian): Shift+[+] (key to the right of èé)
Spain (Spanish): Shift+[+] (key to the right of `^)
(Latin America)): Shift+[+] ((key to the right of ´¨)
Sweden (Swedish): Shift+’ (key to the right of Ä)
Combined text formatting in Discord
How to Bold and Underline Discord Text?
Adding a symbol for each formatting type before and after the desired text is all that is required to combine two or more types of discord text formatting.
In either case, adding one after the other won’t make any difference, as long as the order is maintained. Specifically, if you add two asterisks to make the text bold at the beginning of the text, followed by two underscores, you must close the underline first by adding two underscores prior to the two asterisks.
To bold and underline, either of these is correct:
**__Bold and underlined text__** in Discord
__**Bold and underlined text**__ in Discord
A variation like this is, however, incorrect and will disrupt the results. Only the first one will then be applied.
**__Bold and underlined text**__ in Discord
