How to bold on Reddit, step by step
Reddit has two editors for posts and comments, and bold works differently in each.
Markdown editor: type two asterisks, the text, and two asterisks: **read the rules first**. The preview shows it in bold.
Rich text editor: highlight the words and press B in the formatting bar. If you type asterisks here, they stay as asterisks, which is the most common reason bold does not work.
On the website you can switch between the two editors with the toggle next to the text box.
Markdown
**Edit:** thanks for the answers, solved
Bold italic
***Do not*** share your password
Where formatting stops: titles and names
Post titles, your display name and your profile About text are plain text fields. Markdown is not read in them, and there is no B button.
This generator fills that gap. It converts letters into bold Unicode characters, which look bold wherever they are pasted. Use it for a short display name or one word in your About text.
For titles, think twice. A styled title can look like spam to readers and moderators, and Reddit search matches plain letters, so a word in bold Unicode will not be found by someone searching for it.
Accessibility and search
Each bold Unicode letter is a mathematical symbol, not a styled letter. Screen readers may announce it as such, or skip it. That makes a whole sentence in Unicode bold unreadable for some people, while markdown bold is read normally.
If you also post the same text elsewhere, note that X counts most of these letters as 2 characters, so a styled line uses up the post limit faster.