Most people use WhatsApp much like the chat rooms of decades ago: with plain text. Sometimes we share photos and videos, and sometimes we prefer to send audio rather than having to type, but generally, chats consist only of conventional text.
But that doesn’t have to be the case. Users already have several options to improve the readability of their WhatsApp texts, and now, Meta has announced new additions that will allow format messages. In this way, WhatsApp should offer more possibilities to users.
What many people don’t know is that WhatsApp already supported four text formatting options: bold, italic, strikethrough and monospaced. These options allowed us to modify the text to give importance to certain words or to express ourselves better; for example, put the title of the film we saw in italics.
Best format in WhatsApp
Today, WhatsApp confirmed the arrival of four new formatting options: bulleted lists, numbered lists, block quotes and aligned code. Although it is true that it will not make any difference to some, for many they are a very welcome supplement, as they allow share more readable text and easy to understand in more situations.
For example, the bulleted lists They will be very useful for sharing the ingredients of a recipe or summarizing the steps of a process. To use them, simply write the symbol – followed by a space. For example, you can write “- Sugar” (without the quotes) and WhatsApp will automatically create a list.
The ace numbered lists, on the other hand, are very similar, but with a number that will indicate the precise order in which we must follow the steps, or the order in which the things we count happened. To use them, you must write one or two numbers, followed by a period and a space. For example, we can write “1. Open WhatsAppp” (without quotes) to write some instructions.
There block quote This is interesting, because it allows you to highlight a text to which you want to give particular importance compared to the rest; like, for example, a quote from someone we spoke to. It is used by writing the symbol > followed by a space; for example, “>I spoke with Adrián” without the quotation marks.
Finally, the aligned code It is used to distinguish specific information in a sentence and is used with the symbol ` (inverted comma) surrounding the text; for example, “This is a test.”
To this we must add the options we already have. There bold makes letters thicker and is activated by using the * symbol in the text. For example, *This is in bold*. For his part, the italics It is sometimes used to write titles of works or for quotations, and is used with the symbol _ surrounding the text, such as _The Last Samurai_.
He rod will display a line over the word or phrase, to indicate that it is no longer valid or that we have replaced it; works with the ~ symbol, for example ~Code ~.
The new options will be available from today to all users, although as usual not everyone will receive them at the same time and we will have to wait until it is our turn. The formats will be available in both the Android app and the iOS, Mac and WhatsApp web app.
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