WhatsApp now offers 7 ways to style your text: Here’s a tutorial

Code blocks: Perfect for organising code snippets

The code block feature allows you to display code and other monospaced fonts in a clean, organised block instead of endless jumbled lines in a chat. To use it, simply wrap your text in backticks (`). You’ll know it worked when the text shifts to a monospaced font.

Code blocks come in handy when you need to neatly share code snippets with developers, format terminal output and other monospaced text – or simply emphasise words with a different font.

(Image: WABetaInfo)

Quote blocks: Reply ‘directly’ to messages

The quote block is the perfect way to directly respond to a specific part of a message, creating the WhatsApp version of replying directly to a tweet. To use it, just put a > before the text you want to quote.

Quote blocks help when you want to reply directly to part of a long message, keep chat threads easy to follow visually, and call out specific text while still giving context.

Lists: Organise information neatly

The new list formatting options help you neatly present information in clean numbered or bulleted lists instead of long blocks of text.

To make a bulleted list, start each line with a * or – like:

– First item
– Second item
– Etc.

For a numbered list, start lines with a number:

1. First item
2. Second item
3. Etc.

Lists help keep your long messages organised when you need to provide instructions, outline task items, list pros and cons, or present choices/options.

Bold: Draw attention to key words

Bold has been a WhatsApp staple for emphasising key words and phrases by adding asterisks *like this* to draw the reader’s attention. Use bold to highlight important information, make key terms stand out visually, and add emphasis.

Italics: For soft emphasis

Similarly, italics have long allowed readers to emphasise text subtly by surrounding words _like this_ with underscores. Italics help make text stand out slightly less than bold, indicate irony/sarcasm well, and add stress to important points.

Strikethrough: Perfect for retracting statements

Strikethrough is ideal for politely correcting or retracting a statement by adding tildes ~like this~ to neatly cross something out. Use strikethrough when you want to correct a previous statement, retract something cleanly, or cross out options/choices.

Monospace: Highlighting code

You can also format text in a monospaced font with three backticks “`like this“`. It makes the font uniform, perfect for code snippets, formatted poems, and text/ASCII art.

Do note that not all of the above text formatting options have been rolled out widely as of writing. But considering they’ve appeared on the beta branches of WhatsApp on both iOS and Android, a complete release shouldn’t be long.