Bold, but not Overbearing

• By Jess Brown | Jul 27, 2018

Using bold weights in your text can help create emphasis and grab attention, but it does need to be used sparingly.

I was working on a page and the stakeholder wanted the main paragraphs to have several phrases bold, but there were only a couple sentences in the paragraphs. This made it seem like every couple of words was bold. I'm not actually exaggerating. Here's why you should avoid this tendency to make everything "important":

• Overuse of importance-indicators diminishes their effect. ("When everyone's super, no one is." —Syndrome, The Incredibles)
• It's hard to read constantly changing font weights.
• Readers get confused when they can't insert themselves into the reading.

Suggestions you can make for better UX

• Instead of bolding every other phrase, can you break it into a bulleted list?
• Make bold headings above the paragraph instead (helps with scanning).
• Decide what really is important and only embolden that one phrase.
• Find another way to signify importance of concepts with visuals/icons/video.