How to Highlight Text in a LinkedIn Post

You’ve seen it in your LinkedIn feed: a post that suddenly uses bold text to make a point or italics to emphasize a quote. It instantly catches your eye, breaking up the sea of uniform text. But when you go to write your own post, you find there’s no formatting toolbar, no B/I/U button in sight. This guide will show you exactly how to highlight text in your LinkedIn posts. We'll cover the simple method smart creators use and walk through the best practices to make your content pop without looking unprofessional.

Why Bother Highlighting Text on LinkedIn?

Before getting into the "how," let's quickly touch on the "why." In a fast-scrolling social media environment, anything you can do to guide a reader’s eye is a win. Standard text formatting isn't just about decoration, it's a powerful and subtle communication tool. On a platform like LinkedIn, where thought leadership and text-heavy posts reign supreme, a little formatting goes a long way.

• It Grabs Attention: A bolded phrase or an italicized sentence acts as a visual "speed bump" in your post, causing scrollers to pause for a fraction of a second longer. That split-second is often all you need to hook them in.
• It Improves Readability: Highlighting can help structure long posts. By bolding key takeaways or using pseudo-headings, you make your content scannable. Busy professionals can quickly grasp the main points, which makes them more likely to read the entire post.
• It Adds Professional Emphasis: Just like in a well-written report or email, formatting allows you to control the tone and emphasize what truly matters. Whether it's a surprising statistic, a powerful call to action, or the name of a person you’re shouting out, highlighting gives your words the intended weight and clarity.

The Secret: It’s Not Markdown, It’s Unicode

First, let’s clear up a common misconception. LinkedIn does not have a native feature for bolding, italicizing, or underlining text. You can’t use keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+B, nor can you use Markdown syntax like **bold** or *italics*. So, how are people doing it?

The magic trick is something called Unicode. In simple terms, Unicode is a universal character encoding standard that allows computers to represent text from virtually all writing systems. Within this vast library of characters are A-Z letters that have different visual styles baked right into them. For example, the bold "B" you see is not the standard "B" with a bold style applied, it's a completely separate and distinct character that just happens to look like a bold B.

Don't worry, you don't need to be a computer scientist to use this. You just need to know how to copy and paste. By converting your plain text into these special Unicode characters using a simple online tool, you can paste them directly into LinkedIn, and they'll appear formatted for everyone to see.

How to Highlight Text in a LinkedIn Post: A Step-by-Step Guide

Ready to try it out? The process is incredibly simple and takes less than a minute. Once you do it once, it will become a natural part of your content creation workflow.

Let's use an example. Say we want to format this sentence:

"We increased lead generation by over 300% in just one quarter."

Step 1: Write Your LinkedIn Post Draft

Start by writing your content as you normally would in a text editor, a Google Doc, or directly in the LinkedIn compose box. Focus on your message first. Get the words right, then worry about the styling. For our example, our draft is: "We increased lead generation by over 300% in just one quarter."

Step 2: Find a Unicode Text Converter Tool

Open a new browser tab and search for a "Unicode text converter" or "fancy text generator." There are dozens of free, easy-to-use websites that do exactly this. No need to sign up or download anything.

Step 3: Type or Paste Your Text into the Converter

On the converter website, you'll see a text box. Type or paste the words you want to format into this box. In our case, we'll type "over 300%".

Step 4: Choose and Copy Your Desired Style

The tool will instantly generate your text in dozens of different styles: bold, italic, bold-italic, cursive, underlined, strikethrough, and many more. Scroll through the options and find the one you want. For our example, we'll find the "Bold (Serif)" or "Bold (Sans)" style.

Click the "Copy" button next to your chosen style, or simply highlight the formatted text and press Ctrl+C (or Cmd+C on a Mac).

"over 300%" → find the bold style → Copy "𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝟑𝟎𝟎%"

Step 5: Paste the Formatted Text into Your LinkedIn Post

Navigate back to your LinkedIn draft. Highlight the original plain text you want to replace ("over 300%") and press Ctrl+V (or Cmd+V) to paste the special Unicode version. Your sentence will now look like this in the LinkedIn editor:

"We increased lead generation by 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝟑𝟎𝟎% in just one quarter."

Step 6: Review and Publish

Give your post a final read-through to make sure everything looks correct. The formatted text should appear exactly as you copied it. Once you’re happy with it, hit the "Post" button and watch your visually enhanced content go live!

Best Practices: Using Formatted Text Like a Pro

Just because you can turn your entire post into cursive with strikethrough doesn't mean you should. The key to using text highlighting effectively is restraint. It should enhance your message, not distract from it. Here are some simple dos and don'ts to follow.

The 'Do' List: When to Highlight Text

• To Emphasize One Powerful Statistic: Numbers can get lost in a paragraph. Highlighting a key data point (e.g., "We saw a 47% jump in engagement") makes it the hero of the sentence.
• To Make a Call to Action (CTA) Stand Out: Guide your reader on what to do next. A simple phrase like "Send me a DM for the free guide" is much more effective when italicized at the end of a post.
• For Section Headers in Long Posts: If you're writing a longer, list-style post, you can use bold text to create simple, unofficial subheadings that break up the content and improve flow.
• Example:

• Creating great content comes down to three things:
• Step 1: Know Your Audience
  Understand their pain points and what they want to learn...
• Step 2: Provide Actionable Value
  Don't just talk theory, give them practical takeaways...
• To Highlight a Key Takeaway: Summarize the core message of your post at the end and put it in bold or italics. This helps reinforce your point and makes it memorable.

The 'Don't' List: When to Leave It Plain

• DON'T Format Your Entire Post: This is the number one mistake. A full post in bold or cursive is extremely difficult to read and looks unprofessional and spammy. Use formatting for emphasis, not as your default text.
• DON'T Format Important Hashtags or @Mentions: LinkedIn's search and notification systems rely on standard text to recognize hashtags and user tags. Wrapping #marketing or @JohnSmith in Unicode characters might break their functionality. They won’t be clickable and may not show up in searches.
• DON'T Format URLs: Never, ever apply Unicode formatting to a web link. It will break the hyperlink, and readers won't be able to click on it.
• DON'T Overdo It: The goal is thoughtful emphasis. If you highlight more than two or three key phrases in a single post, the effect is lost. When everything is "important," nothing is.

A Word of Caution: Accessibility and Search Implications

While Unicode formatting is a great stylistic tool, it's essential to be aware of a couple of potential downsides, particularly regarding accessibility and searchability.

Screen readers, the software used by people with visual impairments, may not interpret these special Unicode characters correctly. Instead of reading "strategy" smoothly, a screen reader may see the bolded, Unicode version as a meaningless string of symbols and read it out letter by letter ("s-t-r-a-t-e-g-y") or simply say "blank." For this reason, you should never format critical information that is essential to understanding your post. Use it for stylistic emphasis on words that, if missed, won't change the core meaning of your message.

Additionally, it is unclear whether LinkedIn's internal search algorithm treats Unicode characters the same as standard text. It is possible that a post with the keyword "𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩" may not rank in a search for "leadership." To be safe, avoid formatting core keywords that you want your post to be discoverable for. Stick to formatting supporting phrases, statistics, and calls to action.

Final Thoughts

Using Unicode characters is a simple yet effective way to add bold, italics, and other styles to your LinkedIn posts, helping you structure your content, grab attention in the feed, and add professional emphasis. Just remember the golden rule: use it sparingly and strategically to enhance your message, keeping accessibility and best practices in mind.

Crafting which parts of a post to format becomes way easier when you plan your content ahead of time instead of trying to write and perfect it right before you publish. At our company, we rely on a clear visual calendar to get it right. That’s why we designed Postbase with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop content planner. It helps us map out our entire LinkedIn strategy, so we have plenty of time to compose thoughtful posts, decide on the formatting, and schedule everything to go live at the perfect moment - all without any of the last-minute stress.