bold text, in body copy
Bold names of food people (chefs, celebrity foodies), names of restaurants and stores, and, if the writer is talking about stand-out dishes, bold those, too.
You can also use bolding to emphasize salient points.
Bolding is your trusty rifle* in the war against big-ass, ugly gray blocks of text. And big-ass, ugly gray blocks of text are quagmires for the reader. But, just as with firearms, you don’t want to go about using bold willy nilly. Too much bold text and the things you want to emphasize get lost in the rat-a-tat-tat. So resist the urge to bold entire sentences or more than one or two salient points per paragraph, depending on graf length. Really, there are no hard and fast rules to bolding; you have to use your judgment.
*<h4>Is Your Nuclear Option</h4>
- Apply bolding to the first reference only.
- Use <strong>Lorem ipsum</strong>, not <b>Lorem ipsum</b>
CORRECT
<strong>David Chang</strong> is a vegetarian.
Foodies love <strong>David Chang.</strong>
<strong>Danny Meyer</strong>’s burger joint, <strong>The Shake Shack,</strong> is in Madison Square Park.
INCORRECT
<strong>David Chang’s</strong> pork buns are porky.
Notice that only David Chang’s proper name takes bolding — not the apostrophe or the “s”
BOLDING WITH PUNCTUATION
Note that commas and periods in the examples above should take the bolding, but that colons or semicolons should not. Yes, it’s weird, but there’s precedent for it.
Exception: When bolding an intro phrase that contains a colon, also bold the colon. Example below …
Top Three Awesome Foods
<strong>sliders: </strong>How can you not love them?
<strong>pizza: </strong>It’s the best!
<strong>nachos: </strong>Crunchy and cheesy.
