The Bold Who Cried Wolf by Nicole Moran

Alright, alright, we get it!  This text is more important than the other text around it.  But if you put every other sentence in bold, you just “cried wolf.”  I don’t believe you anymore.  It can’t ALL be important enough to be bold, so I’m going to start ignoring your boldness (no pun intended).  And when it’s time for me to really notice something, I’m going to miss it or ignore it because you cried wolf too many times.

At Cirrus ABS, we have an internal saying we all use, “If you bold everything, nothing is bold.”  It’s not just bold text either.  I’ve seen websites get very creative when trying to draw attention to certain copy. 

Note:  Rainbow text is never okay unless you are an 8 year old little girl, Rainbow Bright, or a Skittles commercial.  It is hard to read on the Web, if you’ve ever tried—when every letter in a word is a different color.  I’ve heard arguments like, “But it catches their attention!”  That may well be true, but is that how you want to draw their attention?  If you have a professional website, rainbow text is not the way to go!

If your website has a black or dark gray font color (something neutral), it is okay to color a word or bold it to show it is important.  But when you have an entire page or sentence that is red, another that is green and one with larger font; sadly, it makes your website look sloppy.  Be consistent.  Across the board, be consistent.  If something is important, bold it; only it and not everything around it.  Keep the end user in mind—and think about it like this: If I was reading this website, would this make sense to me?  Typically, the things we write make more sense to ourselves than they sometimes may to someone else—especially if it is your forte and not your reader’s.

In the same vein, it is like sending all of your emails with high priority.  If every email I receive from you is high priority, I’ll start ignoring that high priority mark.  As with high priority emails, bolding and colored text should be used sparingly only when something truly is important.  As a co-worker of mine just said, “If you bold everything but a sentence or two, you just made those un-bolded sentences the bold part of the page, because it’s the first thing I’ll notice and read.”

Cry wolf too many times and your readers may start missing the point.