Emphasising Prose

Martin Fowler writes about making heavy use of bold font weights to emphasise what is important. He argues it is self-defeating.

[T]he more a writer uses typographical emphasis, the less power it has, quickly reaching the point where it loses all its benefits.

Martin focuses on technical and business writing, but this applies to regular writing as well.

My posts used to be full of italics and bold text. I felt it was important to highlight for the reader the parts of my prose that I deemed important. It was only through writing and reading more that I realised that I was forcing emphasis rather than earning it.

Emphasis is not achieved through these typographical tools. It comes from the right choice of words and their order. Their rhythm. The formatting distracts the reader from what matters - the words. It disconnects them from the voice. Instead of helping the reader, over-italicised and bolded text only makes their experience painful.