Updated · Built and checked by the PlinzoTools team, formulas tested against published sources
Format text with WhatsApp's bold, italic, strikethrough, and monospace markup.
17 words · 84 chars · 4 lines
WhatsApp supports basic text formatting using special characters around your text -- asterisks for bold, underscores for italic, tildes for strikethrough, and backticks for monospace -- but remembering the exact syntax (and combining styles correctly) is easy to get wrong. This tool provides a toolbar to apply formatting and a live preview showing exactly how your message will render.
Type your message, then select text and click a formatting button (Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, Monospace) to wrap it with the correct markers, or use bullet/numbered list and quote block buttons to format whole lines. The live preview shows exactly how the formatted message will look in WhatsApp. Copy the result and paste it directly into a chat.
Bold: *text* | Italic: _text_ | Strikethrough: ~text~ | Monospace: `text`
These can also be combined -- for example, *_text_* renders as bold and italic together. Getting the marker order and nesting right by hand is a common source of formatting that doesn't render as expected, which is exactly what this tool's toolbar and preview solve.
Business owners writing an announcement or promotional message with proper emphasis. Anyone drafting a longer WhatsApp message with lists, quotes, or emphasized text who wants to verify formatting looks right before sending.
WhatsApp formatting is applied by the app when a message is displayed, based on the marker characters around your words. A few small details decide whether the styling appears or the raw symbols stay visible. Knowing them saves a lot of trial and error when you write longer messages.
Imagine a small shop announcing a weekend sale. You might write a headline in bold, list the items on separate lines, cross out the old prices with strikethrough, and mention a code in monospace so customers can copy it easily. Typed out, the pieces look like this: *Weekend Sale* on the first line, then ~Was 40~ *Now 30* for a price line, and then a monospace code such as SAVE10 wrapped in backticks. In the live preview you can confirm that the headline is bold, the old price is crossed out, and the code stands apart in a fixed-width style before you copy it into a chat or broadcast.
The preview approximates how WhatsApp displays text, but the app itself is the final authority. Its supported markup can vary between versions and platforms, and the look of fonts differs between phones, so send a test to yourself before a large broadcast. Some third-party keyboards and other messaging apps do not understand these markers at all, in which case the recipient sees the raw symbols. Copy and paste behavior may also vary depending on the device, so check that the pasted text keeps its markers. Finally, formatting is purely visual; it does not change how a message is delivered or stored.
Basic bold/italic/strikethrough/monospace formatting is supported broadly across current WhatsApp apps (mobile and desktop) -- very old app versions may not render it.
Yes -- combined markers like *_text_* apply both styles at once; this tool's toolbar handles the correct marker order automatically when you select formatted text and apply another style.
The most common causes are a space between the marker and the word, a missing closing marker, or the message being viewed in an app that does not support the formatting.
Markers generally need to surround whole words or phrases with clear boundaries, so formatting a few letters in the middle of a word is unreliable. Format the full word instead.
It is applied by each recipient's app when it displays the message, so anyone using a version that supports it should see the styling. Sending a test first is the safest check.