Alternatives to Bolding Headings

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 | Design / CSS, Technical Communication

I’ve noticed that lately, I’ve been choosing something other than bold formatting for high-level headings. Sans-serif typefaces like Arial and Verdana are commonly used as headings, and when they get beyond about 14 points, they start looking a little too heavy.

The fact that the heading is in a larger font and is surrounded by white space sets it apart from body text, so bolding can be unnecessary anyway. Instead of bolding, I sometimes like to set headings apart using some additional visual cue like color (which may or may not help, depending on whether you have users that are colorblind) or a graphical indicator. An icon, vertical lines, background shading, or gradients can be part of a heading style and readily suggest to the reader that something is different about that text.

I’ve started to favor these alternatives, and I think they have added to the visual interest of the overall documents.

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5 Comments to 'Alternatives to Bolding Headings'

Raj
March 15, 2009

Is the word “bolding” correct? The adjective forms of the word are “bold·er and bold·est”, adverb form is ‘boldly” and the noun form is “boldness”.

Do techncial writers have the freedom to use words not found in dictionaries or not commonly used?

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Ben
March 17, 2009

I was using it informally as a verb. This is a blog, not a technical document, therefore granting more freedom (one of the attractions of having a blog).

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Raj
March 19, 2009

Whether it is a technical document or a blog, the word ‘bolding” is incorrectly used by many technical writers and developers. This word, I feel, is incorrect.

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Ben
March 20, 2009

Well, you have to pick your battles. I pick mine, as a couple of my more complaint-toned posts attest. I wouldn’t use “bold” as a verb in documentation—I would probably phrase it something like “apply bold formatting.” But you never know where language change will take us in spite of our most stubborn resistance.

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