Topic: Please don't use bold text in your posts. (Read 864 times)

I'm trying your advice. What does the end of your probable scam promoting sig say.... I can't read it those dumb fools left the caps lock on. What promises does it make?

These tips on this thread are really helpful.

Saved me a lot of time already.

Not just you, there are many who do not like it. I am also don't read a post but when that is full of bold text.


I totally ignore the capslock text. And it's really time-consuming for the reader. This is more annoying to me than bold text.

Visually, capslocked-letters cost more time to read, with the same topic title, the one is written with lowercase is more friendly and easier to read as well as catch ideas of titles. In contrast, capitalized-title is more difficult to read and catch ideas.
Let's compare:
I could be wrong but I think this is what most of readers feel about capitalization.
I agree.

Of course highlighting of certain words can be useful.  Regardless of bold, uppercase or color. To even waste time on a big conversation about it is about what one can expect from chipmixer spammers.

If you are getting paid 7 bucks per post, you could  place the letters in the correct order. We post for free so take it dirty or you can have a full refund. Can you believe the board has financed you gaining 14 bucks or whatever for this garbage. What is darkstar thinking?

Someone creates output containing some bold, uppercase or color you don't like. Move along.

Sure the effort to reward ratio can vary slightly (within a sensible range of caps, bold etc). I'm sure those presenting real value here are not going to abuse it to a level that seriously impacts that ratio to anywhere near worthy of a thread about it.

Actmyname has some strange fonts he uses for fun that make it hard to read. However, I'm sure he will not use those if he really wanted to convey and important point.

Caps is not anger or shouting in all cases. It just saves time using other variants of emphasis or highlighting.

Yes, I agree with you, it's quite possible that capslock can be used for the title to specify the content (like [SERVICE], [ANN] / [BOUNTY] or [OPEN] / [FULL] for signature campaigns) or to improve the layout of a post. I can't remember if I used capslock in my posts, usually I'm using bold in my guides or underlined font for explanations sometimes.

Like you've already said: it's relevant how often such features are being used and where (when writing a plain text, special formatting isn't useful but it's very useful in guides or even to outline technical stuff (for exapmle the formatting style of nc50lc in his technical explanations is a very good one.)

Capslock means capitalization that has its helpfulness if used relevantly, just don' abuse Capslock.

I think using capitalization for topic title in OP can be acceptable, I do it too. However, weeks ago, when I made my thread on posting technique (Bitcointalk posting etiquette), and I reread theymos' guide, I deeply rethought that topic title in OP is likely unnecesary, IMO. It simply repeats what writer already mention in topic title. I have still not had my final thoughts and decisions for my next threads (as well as edit my old ones), but I will keep that idea in mind. As you see in my thread history, my recent threads don't have titles - that repeat topic titles - in OP. I would prefer to keep doing this, because I feel my threads look better.

How about capslock? I've the impression that it's more annoying to read text in CAPSLOCK than bold text because usually it's also expressing anger and aggression. Or maybe my judgement regarding capslock is only a little bit damaged from some people using it frequently where normal text seems to be not enough. 

Bold text is fine if it's used in a decent way to highligh parts of a text or for sub-headlines. 

Same goes for smileys.

I agree with you Jet Cash.
I would add that this is also about a lack of personal culture and respect for others.
It seems to me that it doesn't really matter to such users whether someone will read their posts but just fill their writing quota for the day.
We may not consider it as spam, but it is irritating.

Some of you aren't picking up the point. We don't all have time to read all the posts in a thread, and thus we have to skip read. If we have to hunt for a reply because of the bad use of quoting, or we cannot gain a quick appreciation of a post, then we just skip the post. Too many of these distractions mean that we may exit the thread, and never revisit it. I have put members who frequently produce distracting posts on ignore. This may not longer be important as I have reduced my merit awarding due to time pressures. The point that I was trying to make is that a single emboldened word turns a single image phrase into a sequence of 3 images. This may not be significant for people who don't have English as a first language, but for those of us who have to scan text quickly, it is an annoyance.

Printed articles in the quality newspapers are displayed in columns, and one reason for this is to allow for fast scanning of the text. If you watch the eyes of most readers, they will move from left to right as they read the article. However, the eyes of a news analyst will have virtually no sideways movement, but they just scan scan down the column. This is because they are able to extract the content of a complete line from a single image. You will also notice that newspapers tend to use left and right justification, and to avoid splitting words over two lines - this is another aid to fast reading.

In this age of information overload, it is worth trying to speed up the processes of information gathering. For example, I have helped a couple of people who felt they had to repeat the words silently as they red them. You can recognise this if you watch their lips as they are reading.  Helping them to skip this spoken stage increases their reading speed quite dramatically.

When making post, don't write them for yourself, but construct them for your target audience. That way you will get the maximum exposure for your message. One of the problems with sig spammers is that they aren't interested in their audience, they just want to get a word string into a thread to meet their quota. Make sure that your posts rise about the polluting effluent of the sig spammers.

I think you're in the minority here. If you talk about colour text, fine. But you can't really say for sure that.bold prints are disgusting (you may personally find them so but it shouldn't be a generalization). I use bold texts from time to time and it's for stylistics and desired effect. And like other posters opined, this should be used with discretion.

Overusing tool will make posts more annoying!

Every tool has a useful feature for very special situations. If people use tool appropriately in context, and at acceptable intensity, don't overuse it, tool will give positive effects in general. In contrast, overusing them will cause adverse effects.

Tools (bold, color, glow, underline, italicization, capitalization) are helpful supplementary things, but they are not must one that writers have to use repeatedly; and overuse should be avoided.

In some high standard English test, like IELTS, writers have to make their essays as succinctly as possible. That is what I wrote as well-structured, and well-composed.

If people don't have to use bold in IELTS test to emphasize their ideas, they don't have to use bold in the forum. It is obviously that they can use bold, but it is not a must thing. I use bold too, in some situations.

The most causes that lead posters to make bold here is they naively think that using bold will help their posts become more interesting, and get more attention from readers. They don't know the fact that if readers see a post which totally in bold, they will ignore it (me too).

Well this is my belief so you and I agree on this.  And yet  jet cash does not agree with us. Along with some others.

This is why we as people have fights wars grudges etc. 

I do think bold type is not worth fighting over. At least compared to other stuff.

I am fine with bold letters as long as they are used properly, for example, to highlight important points. But, if whole topic is in bold letters it puts me off.

Bold or colored sentenses are the first thing that catch the readers attention especially when it is a long post.
Reader will unconsciously focus on those parts because he believes it will make him quickly understand  what the post is about.
It is like when someone is speaking and suddenly changes his tone. bold = loud tone.

A long text without special formatting is the same as monotonous speech, both are boring.

For the first sentence in the quoted rely above, i beg to differ with your school of thought as a well-structured and composed thread can still be characterized or identified based on the proper used of writing equipment made available by the forum which bold is one of those.

As for the second sentence, to my understanding this isn't a formal platform where everyone expects the discussion and style of writing to be so professional or queen-like. This is an informal forum were every style of writing probably is welcomed but still I'm advocating for those feature to be misused or abused.

I only tend to use it for single words, like when I'm quoting someone and I want to draw attention to one specific word they've said.
I can't just quote the single word, since I'd lose the context, but making it bold usually works.

Other than that, it still has its place in a good thread, only if used very sparingly though.

Bold is not a matter, but how people use bold is a true matter (when, where and how they use bold).

Well-structured, and well-composed posts don't need bold texts. I imply texts in paragraphs, not in ordinal contents if someone writes a long topic or a lecture here.

I don't think there are serious things to discuss we should use bold or should not use it. In international English tests, like IELTS, people don't have to bold their texts just to catch attention of markers and increase their odds to have higher scores.

I've selected this sentence as an example of a good construction.

When one is learning to read, then one looks at individual letters, and those are built into a word. Then one moved on the next string of letters.  Pretty soon, one starts to recognise strings of letters as words, and the word is no longer a string of letters, but an easily recognised image. If one spends a lot of time reading, then certain word combinations become recognisable as a phrase image, and this speeds up the reading process considerably. When I look at the quoted sentence, I see two images  - "But Hey" and "does it matter". The comma makes this even simpler. Text such as "does it matter" is recognised as 3 images, and therefore slows down to reading process, whilst it adds nothing to the message impact.

On scanning a thread, a post presents a single image for my evaluation. If it a wall of text, or has other characteristics that are likely to slow down the reading, then the probability is that I will skip over it. Of course there are exceptions. I realise that I could be missing the chance to read an interesting opinion,but I have found that as a general rule, formatted posts contain lower value content ( in my opinion).  Let me provide an analogy. If you are selling karate and kung fu equipment, then you don't paint your shop pink, and fill the window with Barbie dolls. You may have the best equipment at the lowest prices, but most material artists are likely to walk past your shop and go elsewhere. I appreciate that such a window could be attractive to a specialist market, but as a general rule photographs of Ip Man, Bruce Lee, or nunchaku, butterfly knives, or a wooden man will attract a wider audience.

Always remember that if you post isn't read, then it has failed in its purpose.

I guess this is what JetCash means when he said "bold text in your posts."

But hey, does it matter? It seems like people are posting based on their assumptions and lecture Jet Cash about posting style.

I stumbled upon this example:
I'd say this is incorrect use of bold font, because I instantly stopped reading.