Prefer bold type to emphasise text that you want to highlight, such as:
Bold will draw attention to the text you highlight while preserving the letter shape that aids comprehension. Other options for emphasis, such as italics or underlining, are physically harder to read.
Reserve bold emphasis for short bursts of texts rather than whole paragraphs.
Use bold to help individual words stand out in the text, especially when the reader needs to do something. But do so sparingly because too much bold may end up being distracting rather than helpful. Definitely don’t bold entire paragraphs.
A combination of bold and different font sizes is your best bet for building an effective heading hierarchy. Prefer this approach to italics, underlining or all caps, which are all harder to read than bold text because they change or interfere with the letter shapes. Following is a typical heading-and-text hierarchy for a document.
| Level 1 | 16 point Arial, bolded |
| Level 2 | 14 point Arial, bolded |
| Level 3 | 12 point Arial, bolded |
| Body text | 11 point Arial |
Another common reason for emphasising text is to highlight defined terms in a legal document. This signals to readers that a word or phrase is defined in a glossary or definitions list elsewhere in the text. In that case, you can bold each defined term when it appears in the body text, but only when it takes on that defined meaning.
At the same time, if your document is bursting with defined terms, regular bolding will start to become counter productive and distract readers from your content. This may be a particular problem with public facing documents such as insurance policies or consumer contracts.
In these cases, ask yourself whether you really need to highlight the defined terms at all. If you do, consider using title case (with an initial capital on each word in the term) instead.
We will pay you a monthly benefit for up to 12 months and $8,000 for a loan with principal and interest repayments.
We will pay You a monthly Benefit for up to 12 months and $8,000 for a Loan with Principal and Interest Repayments.
We will pay you a monthly benefit for up to 12 months and $8,000 for a loan with principal and interest repayments.