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If you are reading these lines, you must also be pondering the question, ‘How should I effectively emphasize a word in my essay?’
Having explored this subject for myself a while ago, I’m glad to share with you what I’ve learned. The answer may not be as straightforward for us, modern people, who are spoiled by social media with all its emojis, colorful texts, and casual writing. These things don’t work in essays, due to the constraints of academic writing.
So, how do you emphasize a word in an essay then? Actually, there exist plenty of alternative yet equally impactful techniques, and I’m going to delve into them in this article, focusing on their pros and cons.
What Does it Mean to Emphasize a Text?
We all know that titles, sections, or subheadings should be highlighted. We are used to doing so in our papers by using, for example, a bold font.
That’s not my question, though. What I’m really asking is: ‘What do you want to achieve by emphasizing a sentence, or a certain word in your essay?’ – as any action without a clear purpose lacks meaning.
For instance, in my writing, I see the following reasons for emphasizing words:
- Creating impact – when I want to create a stronger emotional impact and persuade my readers more effectively;
- Adding clarity – when I feel my reader might be losing focus, e.g., when there is a long sentence or a paragraph;
- Highlighting what’s important – when I want to emphasize the key point(s) in my essay;
- Introducing terminology – when I need to define something important for my reader.
Unless you are pursuing any of the above goals, I think it’s not even worth distracting your reader by emphasizing a segment of your essay’s text in vain.
Popular Techniques to Emphasize a Word in an Essay
The following techniques are readily available for you to emphasize text:
- Italicization – using Italics font style. For example:
“The significance of environmental sustainability cannot be overstated”
Pros: It is easy to read, and is often used in academic writing, of which an essay is a great example. It gives a clean and professional appearance to one’s text.
Cons: It’s not the most effective solution to highlight the text, i.e., it is easy to overlook when reading fast.
- Bold font – highlighting text in bold. For example:
“Effective communication is the cornerstone of successful leadership”
Pros: The visual striking power of a bold text is far greater than in the previous, italicized text. It is great for setting priorities and emphasizing content.
Cons: As bold font style is often used for titles and headings, its use within an adjacent text can be misleading and less effective. Also, overusing bold text can be quite distracting.
- Underlining – as in hyperlinks. For example:
“Language is a powerful tool for expressing emotion and identity”
Pros: It’s a powerful visual technique to make certain words stand out. Also, it is a traditional way that we’ve borrowed from handwriting – something hard-wired into our habits and, hence, universally understandable.
Cons: In modern writing, underlining is strongly associated with hyperlinks. Thus, it can appear quite confusing for most people.
- Capitalization – capitalizing all letters in a word. For example:
“The central tenet of this philosophy is PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY”
Pros: A highly effective way to grab the reader’s attention. My favorite technique for words for emphasize in essay or any other academic text. When used carefully, capitalization brings excellent results.
Cons: The only downside I can think of comes from abusing this method – when half of a sentence, or an entire sentence is capitalized.
- Dashes – in particular, using the Em dash, which is the longest (and the only appropriate one for our purpose) among the En dash and hyphen. For example:
“In times of crisis, one quality-leadership-often emerges as a guiding force”
Pros: Visually very conspicuous, if both ends of a word are dashed. Useful for adding comments and other words for emphasis without overloading the overall flow of information.
Cons: Even a slight overuse, e.g., 2 or 3 dashes in a short paragraph, can obscure the meaning and distract the reader from the main story.
- Font size and style variation – playing with different fonts to emphasize something. For example:
“Balancing work, family, and personal pursuits is a universal challenge”
Pros: I can hardly think of any pros with this method of emphasizing words.
Cons: Words and fragments of text emphasized using this method are poorly visible. They look unprofessional and give the impression of bad formatting. Besides, this method is more time-consuming than the rest.
The Best and the Worst Techniques to Emphasize Words
It’s time for a good summary, as I’ve listed enough of the most popular methods of emphasizing words examples. Below, I bring to your attention some of the best and the worst (in my opinion) techniques of emphasizing words in an essay:
| Best Techniques | Worst Techniques |
| Capitalization | ALL CAPS |
| Bold | Font size and style variation |
| Underlining | Colorful text |
| Dashes | Mixing different styles |
| Italicization | Quotation marks |
The Bottom Line
In formalized writing like essays, we don’t enjoy many emphasis options. Nevertheless, those options that are available, and which we’ve reviewed in this article, offer enough formatting capabilities to achieve whatever goals we pursue. However, even my favorite CAPITALIZATION option I use with extreme caution – maximum once in an essay – as I know that too much emphasis will have the opposite effect.
