Bold first letters of words
Paste a text and the beginning of each word is made bold, a format some people find easier to skim. Choose how much of the word to bold, see the preview and copy the result as HTML or Markdown.
Runs in your browser: nothing you enter is sent anywhere.
How to use it
- Paste your text. The preview shows it with the bold beginnings.
- Choose how much of each word to bold: 30, 40, 50 or 60 percent.
- Pick HTML or Markdown and copy the result.
How it works
Each word is found, its length in visible letters is counted, and the first part (rounded up, at least one letter) is wrapped in bold. Everything between words stays untouched. HTML output escapes special characters so it is safe to paste into a page.
Worked example
At 50%, “Quick brown fox” becomes <b>Qui</b>ck <b>bro</b>wn <b>fo</b>x in HTML, or **Qui**ck **bro**wn **fo**x in Markdown. “Quick” has 5 letters, 50% of 5 is 2.5, rounded up to 3.
Tips
Short words become fully bold at high percentages, which loses the effect, so 30 to 50 percent is usually enough. For a document you share, a stylesheet can do the same job with less markup, but this converter is quick for one-off use.
Frequently asked questions
Does this make me read faster?
Not guaranteed. Some people like it, and research on whether it speeds up reading is mixed. Try it on your own text and keep it only if it helps you.
How many letters are bold?
The first letters of each word, rounded up from the percentage you choose, and at least one. At 50%, a 5-letter word gets 3 bold letters, a 3-letter word 2 and a 1-letter word 1.
What is a word here?
A run of letters or digits. A hyphen or apostrophe inside keeps it as one word, so "well-known" is bolded once at the start. Punctuation and spaces are left as they are.
Which output should I copy?
HTML gives b tags, with the characters <, > and & escaped. Markdown gives text with ** around the bold part; if your text contains Markdown characters such as * or _, they are not escaped.