16 Typographic Emphasis

Emphasizing select portions of your writing can help direct the reader’s attention. Care must be used not to overuse these techniques, however, as it could have adverse effects and make your writing more difficult to read.

Bold Text
Bold text is a good example of using emphasis to highlight short portions of writing. For example, bolded text can help a reader quickly scan a large portion of text at the beginning of each item in an unordered list.

You can also use bolded text for the following:

• Highlighting Key Information: Used to make important details stand out.
• Headings and Subheadings: Helps in differentiating and organizing sections.
• Drawing Attention to Warnings or Cautions: Ensures critical warnings are noticed.
• Stressing Terms or Concepts: Emphasizes specific terms for focus or learning.

Italicized Text
Another method of highlighting our professional writing is to italicize specific terms or concepts. Titles of films, television series, and publications are italicized (ex. Hyperion is a book by Dan Simmons.), as are the names of vessels (ex. Titanic, Voyager II) and court cases (ex. Brown v. Board of Education).

Underlined Text
When I was younger, we used to underline book and movie titles. We rarely, if ever, underline our writing anymore, however, because the practice is now associated with the interactive hyperlinks found on web pages. Underlining text also adds more elements to a page or screen which reduces reading efficiency.