Discord Text Formatting Guide in 2023: Colors, Bold, Italics (2023)

From humble beginnings on Discord...

I was a complete newbie when I joined my first Discord channel.

People were writing underscores, bolding, strikethrough, italics, and even colors in Discord chat! "How the hell do people color their Discord posts?!" I thought.

What kind of Discord command(s) have people used to format their text so nicely?

In this guide, we'll walk you through Discord's text formatting in detail, showing you exactly how to color text, bold, italic, and more.

OfYou can learn amazing discord text format

If you're reading this, you were probably that guy or gal (or trying to avoid all the hoax and become a Discord text format expert!)

Anyway, today I'm going to show you how to write literally in any format that the Discord app offers.

That's youlearn the basicsbehind Discord's formatting engine (Markdown & Highlight.js), basic formatting commands (bold, italic, underline, etc.) and you'll learn how to enter text in fields and code blocks - in color!

Keep this page for reference

Once you learn the basics, Discord formatting isn't too bad.

While you're still learning the commands, it might be a good idea to keep (or bookmark) this page open for future reference.

Anyway, enough talk, let's format!

Behind the scenes: Discord's text formatting engine

As we sit and chat on Discord day in and day out, a sleek, lightweight engine works in the background, formatting all of our text.

This "engine" is called Markdown.

The rebate summary

Originally created in 2004 by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz,teeis a lightweight markup language that is easy to read/write. It is completely text based and uses cleverly placed symbols to format words like bold, italics, underline etc.

While it's most commonly used for formatting readme files, forum discussions, and converting plain text to rich text in plain text editors, Discord's developers recognized its potential and built it into the core software.

We're going to cover Discord Markdown in the next section so you can learn how to format all your messages the way you want.

Highlight.js makes color possible

Before I get into the rebranding, I want to explain another cool feature that the developers at Discord have added. it's called libraryhighlight.js.

Now I want to clarify that Discord does not have true full text highlighting. You can't say, "I want this word to be red and this one to be blue!" There is no such kind of highlight.

Erait doesIt exists for our text coloring purposes, but it is a "hacked" version of text highlighting that uses the Highlight.js syntax coloring methods.

Even if we can't highlight the text directly,he canCreate a Discord code block, point it to a specific syntax highlighting profile included in Highlight.js, and then use it to our advantage by enclosing our text in the appropriate symbols.

This all makes a lot more sense when we get to some juicy examples below.

Remember this for future reference

You don't have to remember all these essential details. For now, all you need to know is that Discord is usedMarkdown for your text format, zHighlight.js to highlight blocks of code.

In the next section, I'll show you how to use these formatting options.

How to format text on Discord

And now the fun begins. I'll show you how to use bold, italic, underline, and strikethrough as a starting point.

We'll start with the basics, then move on to creating blocks of code to color the text.

How to Create Bold Text on Discord

To create bold text on Discord, simply start and end the bold text with two asterisks (*).

the asterisk isSHIFT+8on your keyboard.

If you look at the image below, you'll notice that I put two asterisks or stars before and after the text I wanted to make bold.

This is what I entered and the output it produced:

Here is an example of **bold text**

How to italicize text (create oblique jarring italic)

To make Discord italicized or italicized, you need to type the asterisk again, but this timeJust use an asterisk.

For bold text we use two asterisks, like this: **bold text**

For the italics we would do the same but with a single asterisk: *text in italics*

Here is also the asterisk (star).SHIFT+8on your keyboard.

This is what I entered to get the output shown in the image below:

Here is an example of *text in italics*

How to Make Text Bold and Italic on Discord (Bold + Italic)

You may have guessed the bold + italic abbreviation...

Instead of just an asterisk or two, it'sthree stars.

Here is an example of *** bold and italic text ***

How to create underlined text on Discord

To format our text as an underscore, we need to use two underscores (__).

This is a comprehensive guide, so here's the keyboard layout for an underscore (in case you're reading this and have never typed an underscore before):

I wrote this to get the following output:

Here is an example of __underlined text__

How to create strikethrough discord text

For strikethrough text we need to use the tilde (~) key.

Two tildes cross out the text you write.

Here is the keyboard layout (keys highlighted in yellow) for typing a tilde. you have to hitSHIFT + ~.

I entered the following below:

This is an example of ~~strikethrough~~ text

Formatting in international keyboard layouts

A reader recently pointed out that international keyboard layouts should also be considered. Here we assume that the asterisk is "Shift + 8" and the tilde is "Shift + Backtick (`)", but this is not always the case.

Here are some additional keyboard layouts that international users may encounter, and an example of where the asterisk would be on each of these layouts.

German:Shift+[+] (key to the right of Ü)
Español:Shift+[+] (key to the right of `^ (Spain) or ´¨ (Latin America))
French france):* (key to the right of ù%)
French (Belgium):Shift+$ (key to the right of ^¨)
French (Switzerland):shift+3
Italian:Shift+[+] (key to the right of èé)
Swedish:Shift+' (key to the right of Ä)

If you're using one of these alternative keyboard layouts, you can customize it accordingly.

The vast majority of users normally use the standard English keyboard (which is why we set it to default), but we wanted to recognize alternative layouts and make all of this possible.It does not matter thatits design is

Combine even more text formatting options

We can also combine bold, italic, and bold + italic underlined.

Here's an example:

Underlined and italic text

__*underlined and italicized text*__

Underlined and bold text

__**Text underlined and in bold**__

Underlined, italicized and bold text

__***underlined, italic and bold text***__

This is how you "escape" the text and see all its underscores and asterisks

if you reallywantTo see your underscores or asterisks in a message (like in an emoji), you can use the backslash "\" to bypass the markup formatting and display the text exactly as it is.

Consider the following example (note the backslashes "\" at the beginning of each character).

oexcessive backslashesthey are needed here because I have underscores in my message.

\_\_\*\*\*I want this to be shown in all its glory!\*\*\*\_\_\_

But keep in mind that theTrailing backslashes are not required.if you have everything at the beginning:

If it had no underscores, a single backslash '\' would suffice:

\**highlighted message without underscores!**

This completes the basic formatting.

And that's it for the basic format. It's pretty simple stuff, and you should turn it off after a few messages.

The only clues to remember are underscores, asterisks (stars), and backslashes.

Discord-Spoiler-Tag

If you want to write a "spoiler" or something like that, everyone on your channelshould notwatch immediately (unless they decide to remove the spoiler block), then you can use the Discord spoiler tag.

You can create spoiler text like this:

|| Spoiler text ||

All you have to do is cover your spoiler with double bars or double tube signs.

This will look like this when locked:

And then once it's revealed, this is what your channel will see:

Quotes from Discord/Tag Blockquote

To name something, there is a simple "quote/blockquote" tag implemented in Discord.

You can do this by simply adding the correct carat sign '>':

> Text here

This will look like this once you enter Discord:

You can also quote multiple lines by using the right triple carat '>>>' or by typing a line with a single quote '>' and then holding down SHIFT+ENTER to create a new line within the same block quote.

Advanced Text Formatting on Discord: Write in Color

And now for the fun part... formatting our Discord messages in color!

As soon as you get some colorful messages on your frequently visited channels, you will be asked how to do it.

Let's go through some basics (code blocks) and then jump right into coloring your messages! Come on!

Discord single line code blocks

To create a single line code block on Discord, you need to use the 'tick' or 'backtick' character: `.

Since this key can be hard to find if you've never used it (until now), I've included a nice keyboard layout diagram, highlighted below:

The character "tick" or "backtick" must be imupper left corner of your keyboarddirectly below the Escape (ESC) key.

Once you're familiar with the backtick button, let's create a one-line block of code. All you have to do is place aonly a hundred gravebefore and after your text.

This is what I wrote for the following example:

`This is an example of a one line code block`

Multiline (Multiline) Code Blocks in Discord

Like the single-line code block, multi-line code blocks use the backtick character ("`"). The only difference is that instead of a single backtick (`), you must place three backticks ("`) before and after the text.

The nice thing here is that you can hit enter and spread your text over multiple lines, all formatted into a single multi-line block of code.

Here is the discount for the following example:

```Testing... Multiple lines... Stop my code blocks!```

You'll notice in the image above that we have all of our text in one block of code, but this time on multiple lines like we wanted.

How to format colored text on Discord

And now is the moment we've all been waiting for...[Battery]…Colored text!

I searched the web for a good example of color text formatting on Discord, but couldn't find anything clear.

There were a few examples, but they were pretty nebulous. I haven't found any instructions on how to do this.clearlyshowed you how to format your text if you want it to be a specific color.

We essentially hacked the syntax highlighting

As I mentioned in the introduction, here we will be "hacking" or "hijacking" the Highlight.js syntax highlighter that runs in the background on Discord.

We need to do this because, at the time of writing, Discord does not have any built-in text highlighting features.

As a result, we'll have to tinker around a bit, but as long as it works, it works!

See how text coloring works on Discord

Since we are using a workaround based on Highlight.js, it will work as follows.

We will create multi-line code blocks with three backticks andSet the syntax highlighting language.

We can do this by inserting the programming language reference highlighting right at the beginning of the multi-line code block.

For example. Here we specify 'Apache' as the syntax highlighting language:

```apacheSome text goes here...```

Let's "examine" some syntax highlights and use them to our advantage to color the text.

I've listed most of the colors you'd expect below and have tried to show the differences between the different language references.

What key do we use to color Discord text?

We use a character called a "backtick" which is found on most keyboards in the upper left corner, just above the "TAB" key.

``` This is the grave accent key

On the macOS and Scandinavian keyboard layouts, the grave accent is located in the upper-right corner of the keyboard, next to the "BACKSPACE" key.

Limitations of this method of coloring text

There are (unfortunately) limits to this method. The most common limitation is that your text must be connected in a single wordsomereferenced syntax highlighting languages ​​(not all!).

This means that you cannot write: This is a sentence.

Debe ingresar: This_is_a_sentence O ThisisaSentence.

Why is this?Now that we're exploring syntax highlighting to make our Discord posts stand out, we're basically trying to trick the multi-line block of code into thinking our post is programming code literal.

Most of the time, the desired colors are contained in variables that, by definition, cannot contain spaces.

this placeit does good job is oncode commentsmiSaiten.I have tried to include code and string comments in each of the following colors as much as possible (for ease of typing).

If you look closely, you'll see that I've included some variables and mentioned that you can't use spaces if you choose to use these formatting methods. However, this can be a perfectly viable method for single words.

Anyway, enough of my barking, let's paint!

How to Color RED Text on Discord

Differential syntax highlighting for red (SIMPLE)

Add hyphens (-) before the line where you want red text.

```diff- Here is some red text!```

CSS syntax highlighting for orange (red-orange)

Enclose square brackets [ ] around the text you want to emphasize.

```css[text in RED color highlighted in CSS]```

How to Color Text YELLOW on Discord

Fixed yellow syntax highlighting (SIMPLE).

In Fix everything you type is yellow by default! This is a great easy way to have yellow text.

```fixEverything is yellow in fix -- Line doesn't matter! ```

Apache syntax highlighting for yellow (restriction: NO SPACES)

Add a percent sign and a right parenthesis, %{, to the beginning of your text and a left parenthesis, }, to the end to make your text yellow in Apache syntax.

```apache%{Dark_YELLOW_Colored_Text}```

How to Color Text GREEN on Discord

Light Green Difference Syntax Highlighting (SIMPLE)

Add a plus sign (+) before the line you want to turn green.

```diff+ Here is the green text!```

CSS syntax highlighting for light green

Enclose the text you want to color light green in quotation marks " ".

```css"Here's some nice LIGHT GREEN text"```

Dark Green Bash Syntax Highlighting (SIMPLE)

Quotation marks around your text " "

```bash"Here's some nice dark green text"```

Supervision:That dark green color and the quotes around your text also work in many other reference languages, not just bash. Works with "coffeescript", "cpp" and many more.

JSON syntax highlighting for dark green (SIMPLE)

Just like in Bash, put quotes around the text you want to turn dark green.

```json"Green JSON text"```

How to Color BLUE Text on Discord

INI syntax highlighting for blue

Place square brackets [ ] around the text you want to highlight in blue.

```ini[Here is some text highlighted in blue]```

CSS Syntax Highlighting (Restriction: NO SPACES)

Place a single period (.) in front of the text you want to color blue, and make sure there are no spaces on the line.

```css.dark_BLUE_text_sin_espacios```

Color Format Tips

As you've probably noticed, there are limitations to using this method (for example, not writing spaces for certain colors).

But most importantly, we can still color our text with relative ease!

I recommend using the DIFF, BASH, FIX, and CSS highlights above (for red, green, yellow, and blue, respectively).

However, the examples above include different shades of primary syntax highlight colors and allow you to experiment with them in your messages.

Discord Feed Format

Is it possible to create a custom Discord font format in the Discord app? The answer is yes, although it can be a bit tricky at times due to font limitations on Discord.

You can use a font creation service likestubbornto create the fonts you want and get results like this:

I tried putting some of these fonts on Discord and while it seemed to work for the italic fonts, it didn't work for the "block" font as Discord converted the "O" characters into an emoji:

The key takeaway here is... it's entirely possible to format custom fonts on Discord, but you may run into issues depending on the fonts you choose.

It has also been reported that this no longer works for long sentences of text, so beware of potential font issues with long sentences.

Fortunately, formatting short strings of text for use in titles or short sentences still seems to work just fine, so you can use your custom fonts there.

Markdown Text 101: Dig Deeper

If you want to dig even deeper into Discord Markdown and learn more tips/tricks, here are a few.veryUseful features you can't miss.

the markdown tutorial

My favorite markdown learning resource is simply titled “the markdown tutorial“.Walks you through Markdown step by step with two instructionsmiLive output of what your text will look like. This is a cool learning tool that I definitely recommend diving into for deeper learning.

The Markdown Cheat Sheet

After you've done a few Markdown tutorials and just want a quick reference to look up,GenialMarkdown-Tippblattwhich lists all the format types it would encounter.

The Official Discord Markdown Guide

And finally there is theOfficial discount guidefrom the discord team(it's on the site discordapp.com). It covers everything we've talked about in this guide (in terms of chat format), but doesn't go into too much detail.andIn fact, we get all kinds of color. It can still be a very useful reference if you're looking for a quick refresher.

Now is your turn

And now the ball is on you: go out there and format/color some text!

Don't forget to bookmark this page as a resource for future use. Good luck and have fun!