How to bold text on LinkedIn posts (and when not to)

You can't bold text in a LinkedIn post with a button, because the post composer is plain text. The workaround is Unicode: you swap normal letters for "mathematical bold" characters that look bold, like 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀, and LinkedIn displays them like any other text.

It takes about 10 seconds with a formatter. But it has 2 costs worth knowing before you bold half your post.

How to bold text in a LinkedIn post

1. Write the post as normal.
2. Wrap the words you want bold in double asterisks: **like this**. Use single underscores for italic: _like this_.
3. Paste it into the free LinkedIn post formatter. It converts the marked words to Unicode bold or italic, and turns lines starting with - into bullet points.
4. Copy the result and paste it into LinkedIn.

You can also select words in the formatter and click Bold instead of typing asterisks. To undo it later, paste the post back in and click Plain.

The same text works in comments, your headline and your About section, because they're all plain text too.

How it works

Unicode, the standard behind every character on your screen, has a block called Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols. It holds full bold, italic and script alphabets for maths notation. To LinkedIn they're ordinary characters, so they display in the feed, on mobile and in the app.

But they aren't the letters a to z. That's where the 2 costs come from.

Cost 1: screen readers

A screen reader reads out characters. Faced with a Unicode bold "H", some read "mathematical bold capital H". Others skip the word. Scope, the UK disability charity, explains it with a stylised "t" read out as "mathematical sans-serif script t".

A bolded phrase in a 200-word post is a small annoyance. A bolded hook or call to action can make the post unreadable for someone using a screen reader.

Cost 2: search

LinkedIn search matches the words people type. A bold "SEO" is 3 different characters from a plain "SEO", and LinkedIn hasn't said whether its search treats them as the same.

I don't know for certain either way. So I'd assume a bold keyword might not be found, and keep names, job titles and the terms you want to rank for in plain text.

When bold is worth it

Bold works when it does one job: catching the eye of someone skimming. Good uses:

• One key number in a post full of text
• A short label at the start of a list item
• A single phrase you want quoted back to you

Skip it for whole sentences, every line of a list, your hook and your call to action. If everything is bold, nothing stands out, and the post starts to look like the AI-written posts readers have learned to scroll past. I wrote about those patterns in Can LinkedIn readers spot AI-written posts?

Where native bold does work

LinkedIn articles and newsletters have a real editor with bold, italic, headings and links. Use the toolbar there. Native bold is proper formatting, so screen readers and search handle it the way you'd expect.

Quick reference

• Posts, comments, headline, About: no native bold. Use a formatter, sparingly.
• Articles and newsletters: native bold in the toolbar.
• Keywords and names: always plain text.
• Hooks and calls to action: plain text, so everyone can read them.

For more on what makes a post readable, see the guide to LinkedIn hooks and the post preview tool, which shows where LinkedIn cuts your post off with "see more".