How to Write Bold, Italic and Strikethrough Text on Instagram, LinkedIn and X

To get bold text on Instagram, type your words into the bold text generator, press Copy next to the style you want and paste it into your caption, bio or comment. What you paste isn’t formatting. It’s a different set of characters that look bold: Unicode has its own bold, italic and script letters, and Instagram displays them like any other character. The same trick works on LinkedIn and X. Strikethrough works a bit differently: a combining line is added after each character.

What each platform supports, as of October 2026

Where	Real bold or italic?	What to do
Instagram caption, bio, comment	No formatting controls	Paste Unicode bold or italic
LinkedIn article	Yes: bold, italic, lists, blockquotes	Use the article editor’s toolbar
LinkedIn post, comment, headline	No formatting controls	Paste Unicode bold or italic
X longer post (Premium)	Yes: bold and italics	Use the composer’s rich text
X regular post, reply, bio, name	No	Paste Unicode bold or italic
Strikethrough anywhere above	Not in the native options listed	Paste combining strikethrough text

LinkedIn’s help center says that in an article you can “change the style, bold or italicize any text, add ordered or unordered lists, add blockquotes, or add a divider”. To start one, click Write article in the share box near the top of your homepage. The help center describes these options only for articles, not for regular posts.

X’s help center describes longer posts as an X Premium feature. They allow up to 25,000 characters and “rich text (bold and italics)”, including in quotes and replies. It lists no strikethrough option, and accounts without Premium don’t get it at all.

How to make bold, italic or strikethrough text step by step

1. Open the bold text generator, the italic text generator or the strikethrough text generator. To see every style at once, use the fancy text generator, which shows 22 styles side by side.
2. Type or paste your text. Each style appears in its own row as you type.
3. Press Copy next to the style you want. If your browser blocks clipboard access, the button selects the text and says “Press Ctrl+C”.
4. Paste it into the Instagram caption, LinkedIn post or X composer. Check the preview before you publish, because a few styles may not display on every device.

Only style the words that need it. Copy one word, paste it into a plain sentence, and repeat for the next word.

What the styles look like

Here is “New guide out now” in each style, produced by the site’s own conversion code:

Style	Result	Tool
Bold	𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐠𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐰	Bold, Fancy
Sans bold	𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗴𝘂𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘄	Bold, Fancy
Italic	𝑁𝑒𝑤 𝑔𝑢𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑛𝑜𝑤	Italic, Fancy
Sans italic	𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘸	Italic, Fancy
Bold italic	𝑵𝒆𝒘 𝒈𝒖𝒊𝒅𝒆 𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒏𝒐𝒘	Bold, Italic, Fancy
Sans bold italic	𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝙜𝙪𝙞𝙙𝙚 𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙣𝙤𝙬	Bold, Italic, Fancy
Strikethrough	N̶e̶w̶ ̶g̶u̶i̶d̶e̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶n̶o̶w̶	Strikethrough, Fancy
Underline	N̲e̲w̲ ̲g̲u̲i̲d̲e̲ ̲o̲u̲t̲ ̲n̲o̲w̲	Strikethrough, Fancy

The sans-serif styles look closer to the sans-serif type most apps use; the serif styles stand out more. The strikethrough tool also has a slash-through style.

How it works, and what doesn’t convert

Unicode has a block of characters called Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols. It contains a separate bold A to Z, italic A to Z, script A to Z and so on, plus bold and sans-serif digits. The generator swaps each plain letter for its styled twin. For example, “H” becomes 𝐇 (U+1D407). The Unicode Standard says these characters are meant for mathematical or technical notation, “and not in nontechnical text”. They work in posts, but that is not what they were made for, which explains the drawbacks below.

Only the plain letters A to Z, a to z and, in most styles, the digits 0 to 9 have styled versions. Everything else passes through unchanged:

Before	Bold	Bold script
Café 2026	𝐂𝐚𝐟é 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔	𝓒𝓪𝓯é 2026

The é stays regular because Unicode has no bold é. Bold script has no digits, so 2026 stays plain. The same goes for punctuation, emoji and letters such as ß, ø and ñ. If your text is full of accented words, the effect will look patchy. A few italic and script letters come from an older Unicode block (italic h is ℎ), so they can look slightly different in some fonts.

Strikethrough works differently. The tool adds the combining character U+0336 after every character, including spaces, so the line runs through the whole phrase:

Before	After
Was $49, now $29	W̶a̶s̶ ̶$̶4̶9̶,̶ ̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶$̶2̶9̶

Line breaks are left alone, so each line gets its own strike.

The cost: length, search and display

Character limits. X weighs characters. According to its developer docs, Latin letters and common punctuation count 1, and characters outside those ranges default to 2. The mathematical letters fall outside the ranges, so each bold or italic letter counts 2. Spaces stay at 1, and each combining strikethrough mark adds 1:

Text	X weighted length
New guide out now (plain)	17
Same text in bold or italic	31
Same text in strikethrough	34

Counters that measure UTF-16 code units (as JavaScript does) also count each styled letter as 2. Before posting near a limit, paste the final text into the character counter. The character limits cheat sheet lists the limit for each platform.

Search. 𝐜𝐚𝐟𝐞 and cafe are different characters. A search box that doesn’t normalize text may not match your bold name or keyword to the plain word people type. Keep names, product names and hashtags in plain letters.

Display. Phones and browsers need a font with these characters. If a device has no font with these characters, the reader sees empty boxes instead of letters.

Accessibility: when not to use it

Screen readers don’t read styled letters as ordinary words. Scope, a UK disability charity, notes that a screen reader may read a stylized letter as “mathematical sans-serif script t”. The Texas Tech University accessibility office warns that screen readers “either skip them, announce their Unicode name, or produce garbled output”. A bold word that takes a sighted reader a glance can take a screen reader user several seconds of letter names to get through, or be lost entirely.

Practical rules that follow from this:

• Use styled letters for a short label or one or two words of emphasis, never for whole sentences, your name or your entire bio.
• Never put the only copy of important information (a date, a price, a call to action, a link description) in styled text.
• Use the platform’s real formatting where it exists: the LinkedIn article editor or X longer posts.
• For lists, plain line breaks and a simple symbol or emoji at the start of each line often work as well as bold headings.

Turning styled text back into plain text

If you inherit a bio or a caption full of fancy letters, you can convert it back. Paste it into the fancy text generator (or the bold, italic or strikethrough tool), set Direction to Fancy → plain text and copy the result. The tool removes strikethrough, underline, overline and slash marks (including the short-stroke and double-underline marks other generators use), turns upside-down text the right way up and maps styled letters back to plain ones. Ordinary characters such as ½ or ™ stay as typed. One gap: upside-down text that contains accented letters (such as é or ñ) is currently left as it is. For example, 𝗟𝗮𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵 𝗱𝗮𝘆 becomes “Launch day” and o̶l̶d̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶c̶e̶ becomes “old price”. The conversion runs in your browser, so the text never leaves your device.