In this article
Telegram messages are not plain text. Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, monospace, quotes, hidden spoilers and links with words of your own choosing are all available, and there are three different ways to apply each of them.
Most people use none of it, which is a shame in the two places it genuinely matters: sending a command that must not be mangled, and hiding something the reader has not asked to see yet.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Format text three ways: by selection, by typing markers, and by keyboard.
- check_circle Send a command or a code snippet that arrives exactly as you wrote it.
- check_circle Hide a spoiler behind a tap instead of warning people not to read.
- check_circle Understand why a hyperlink's visible text proves nothing about where it goes.
Selecting the text first is the route that works everywhere — the menu that appears has every style in it.
format_bold The styling is not inside the text
When you make a word bold, Telegram does not put anything around it. The message body stays exactly the characters you typed, and the styling travels beside it as a short list saying where each style starts and how far it runs.
That separation is why formatting looks identical on a phone, a desktop and the web, and why nothing ever leaks through as stray asterisks. It also has one practical consequence worth knowing: copying a formatted message into an app that does not understand it leaves you with the plain words. The emphasis was never in the characters, so it cannot come along.
Which style earns its place
Four of them do real work. The rest are decoration, and decoration in a chat message mostly costs you clarity.
format_bold Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough
code Monospace and code blocks
visibility_off Spoiler
link A link with your own words
If you adopt two: monospace for anything to be copied, spoiler for anything not everyone wants to see.
settings Three ways to apply a style
All three reach the same result. Which is fastest depends on whether your hands are on a keyboard.
- Select the text A menu appears with the styles in it. This works on every client and needs nothing memorised — it is also the only route worth teaching someone else.
- Type the markers as you write Wrapping a phrase in the markers converts it in place as you type. Handy when you already know what you want emphasised before you write it.
- Use the keyboard on desktop Select, then press the combination. Fastest by a wide margin if you are writing anything long.
| Style | Typed markers | Desktop keys |
|---|---|---|
| Bold | Two asterisks each side | Ctrl / Cmd + B |
| Italic | Two underscores each side | Ctrl / Cmd + I |
| Underline | — | Ctrl / Cmd + U |
| Strikethrough | Two tildes each side | Ctrl / Cmd + Shift + X |
| Monospace | A backtick each side | Ctrl / Cmd + Shift + M |
| Code block | Three backticks each side | — |
| Spoiler | Two pipes each side | Ctrl / Cmd + Shift + P |
| Link | — | Ctrl / Cmd + K |
If a marker does not convert the client you are on may not accept that one — the selection menu always does
warning The one that is used against people
Every other style on this page is cosmetic. A link whose visible text you choose is not: it separates what a message appears to say from where it actually goes, and that gap is the mechanism behind most of the fraud that happens in chat apps.
The defence is small and worth making a habit. Hold a link rather than tapping it, and read the address that appears. Be especially careful when the text is itself a URL — a link labelled with one address can point at another, and that is a deliberate trick rather than an accident.
This page is the styles and when each is worth using. The curriculum step goes into the format itself: how entities are encoded, what survives forwarding and quoting, and how bots and automation produce formatted messages.
At a glance
- 1Three ways
Select text, type markers, or use keyboard shortcuts.
- 2Code and spoilers
Code blocks keep exact text; spoilers hide it until tapped.
- 3Check links
A link's visible text can differ from where it goes.
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