You can use formatting attributes to control the appearance of the text on the screen. Using these attributes, you can make words appear in various colors, inverse video, and so forth, depending on the application and the capabilities of your display. This is useful, for example, to distinguish explicit links in the text.
Each formatting attribute consists of a backslash (\) followed by a character. Table 20.1 lists the formatting attributes.
Table 20.1 Formatting Attributes
| Formatting Attribute | Action |
| \a | Anchors text for explicit links |
| \b, \B | Turns bold on or off |
| \i, \I | Turns italics on or off |
| \p, \P | Turns off all attributes |
| \u, \U | Turns underlining on or off |
| \v, \V | Turns invisibility on or off (hides explicit links) |
| \\ | Inserts a single backslash in text |
On color monitors, text labeled with the bold, italic, and underline attributes is translated by the application into suitable colors, depending on the user's default color selections. On monochrome monitors, the text's appearance depends on the application.
The \b, \i, \u, and \v options are toggles; they turn their respective attributes on or off. You can use several of these on the same text. Use the \p attribute to turn off all attributes except \v. Use the \v attribute to hide explicit links in the text. Explicit links are discussed on topic .
Only visible characters count toward the character-width limit specified with the /W command-line option. Lines that begin with an application-specific control character are truncated to 255 characters regardless of the width specification. For more information on truncation and application-specific control characters, see “Options for Encoding”.
In the following example, \b initiates bold text for Example 1, and \ p changes the remaining text to plain text:
\bExample 1\p This is a bold head for the first example.