Fancy Text for WhatsApp: How to Send Bold, Italic, and Stylish Messages
WhatsApp has built-in bold and italic formatting — but it also supports Unicode fancy fonts. Here's how to use both and which to use when.
WhatsApp is one of the few chat apps with real built-in formatting — and it also displays Unicode fancy text. That gives you two completely different ways to make a message stand out, and they're good for different things. Here's how both work.
Method 1: WhatsApp's native formatting
WhatsApp lets you format text with simple markers around a word or phrase:
- Bold: wrap text in asterisks — *like this*
- Italic: wrap in underscores — _like this_
- Strikethrough: wrap in tildes — ~like this~
- Monospace: wrap in three backticks — ```like this```
This is the right tool for normal conversation. It's readable, it's accessible to screen readers, and the formatting is 'real' — WhatsApp renders it as styled normal text, not as substituted characters.
Method 2: Unicode fancy text
For styles WhatsApp doesn't offer natively — cursive, gothic, bubble, small caps — you paste Unicode text from a generator. Copy the style, paste it into the message box, and send. Because it's plain-text characters, it travels through WhatsApp unchanged and shows on the other person's phone.
Generate cursive and gothic messages with the Font Generator →
Which should you use?
Use native formatting for anything you actually want read easily — emphasis in a real conversation, a struck-out correction, a code snippet. Use Unicode fancy text for decorative one-offs: a stylish status, a birthday message, a group name. Don't send long Unicode paragraphs; they're tiring to read and can show boxes on older devices.
A note on the 'About' and group name fields
Your WhatsApp About line and group names are plain text with no native formatting, so Unicode is the only way to style them — and a great place to use it, since they're short and decorative by nature.