If you are on iOS or Android and you updated your WhatsApp over the weekend, you must have realized that you can now reply to WhatsApp messages right from the notification. That’s not all. Other new features include the ability to tap the quick camera button in a chat to pick a photo or video from the camera roll, the ability to pick a set of solid colours for the chat wallpaper, the ability to quickly archive, delete or mut multiple chats at once just by tapping and holding a chat in the chats tab and tapping on the other chats to select them, and the all new WhatsApp Text Formatting Features of converting text to Bold, Italics or striking through them.
Of those brand-new WhatsApp Features, what I have come to like so far is the ability to reply to text right from the notification. What I would have loved to do however is to conveniently use the WhatsApp Text Formatting Features – that is easily convert text to bold, italics and strike through them but for some reason my phone is not allowing me to see the aftermath of playing around with the bold, italics and strikethrough commands. I don’t know whether the problem is my Android Lollipop or the XUI User Interface that’s running my Infinix Hot Note 2.
If you are not the unlucky type whose phone is not misbehaving, this is how you can convert a text to bold, italics, or strikethrough using the new WhatsApp Text Formatting Features:
- Bold – To convert text to bold, simply insert the asterisk sign (*) before and after the word you want to convert to bold e.g. *Hello*. After sending the text, the word will convert from Hello to Hello. If you want to convert the entire sentence to bold, then ensure that you insert the underscore sign before the first word and after the last word e.g. *Hello there, how are you*. This will convert the sentence from “Hello there, how are you” to “Hello there, how are you”.
- Italics – To convert text to italics, simply insert the underscore sign (_) before and after the word you want to convert to italics e.g. _Hello_. After sending After sending the text, the word will convert from Hello to Hello. If you want to convert the entire sentence to italics, then ensure that you insert the underscore sign before the first word and after the last word e.g. _Hello there, how are you_. This will convert the sentence from “Hello there, how are you” to “Hello there, how are you”.
- Strikethrough – To convert text to italics, simply insert the tilde or approximation sign (~) before and after the word you want to convert to italics e.g. ~Hello~. After sending After sending the text, the word will convert from Hello to
Hello. If you want to convert the entire sentence to strikethrough, then ensure that you insert the underscore sign before the first word and after the last word e.g. _Hello there, how are you_. This will convert the sentence from “Hello there, how are you” – to “Hello there, how are you“.
The inclusion of WhatsApp Text Formatting Features seems to be a move by WhatsApp to try and compete with emails. In a previous update for example, WhatsApp allowed people to send and receive documents like pdf files and Ms Office files alongside the traditional videos and image files. This has since allowed people to share office documents right from within WhatsApp thus limiting the need to leave the App in order to share certain types of documents using email Apps like Gmail or Email Exchange.
Although WhatsApp is continuing to grow to reach 1 billion users up from 450 million users it had when Facebook acquired the service two years ago, WhatsApp thinks it doesn’t need to be on any Blackberry device, neither is it continuing to support lower versions of Android that include Android 2.2 and below. Other phones that WhatsApp doesn’t will stop supporting by the end of this year are Nokia S40 and Nokia Symbian S60.
