Telegram has real italics, and using them takes one keystroke. Select the text and press Ctrl+I on Windows or Linux, Cmd+I on macOS, or select it and choose Italic from the formatting menu that appears. On mobile, select the words and pick Italic from the toolbar above the selection.
Because Telegram stores formatting properly, native italics are the right answer for anything typed into a message box. Unicode conversion is for the fields Telegram stores as plain strings, and there are more of those than most people expect.
How Telegram stores formatting
This is worth thirty seconds because it explains everything else in this guide.
A Telegram message is not a string with markers in it. It is a string plus a separate list of formatting entities, each of which says “characters 12 to 20 are italic”. The text and the styling are stored apart.
Two consequences follow. The letters in a natively italic Telegram message are ordinary letters, so search, copy, spell check and screen readers all work normally. And any field that has no entity list cannot carry formatting at all, no matter what you type into it.
The three ways to apply italics
The formatting menu. Select the text. A menu appears with Bold, Italic, Monospace, Underline, Strikethrough and Link. Pick Italic. This is the reliable method and it works on desktop and on mobile, where the formatting toolbar picked up icons for the full set during 2025.
The keyboard shortcut. Ctrl+I on Windows and Linux, Cmd+I on macOS. Fastest if you are typing on a computer, and it applies to the current selection.
Markdown symbols. Typing _text_ or *text* converts on send in many clients. The catch is that this is the least consistent of the three: parsing has differed between Telegram Desktop, the macOS client, the web clients and the mobile apps at various points. If the symbols survive the send, the client did not parse them, and the menu is the fix.
For anything that matters, use the menu. It is the only method that shows you the result before you send.
Which Telegram fields carry formatting
| Field | Native italic | Unicode | Recommended |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chat message | Yes | Yes | Native |
| Group message | Yes | Yes | Native |
| Channel post | Yes | Yes | Native |
| Media caption | Yes | Yes | Native |
| Bio | No | Yes | Unicode, keep it short |
| Channel name and description | No | Yes | Unicode, keep keywords plain |
| Group name | No | Yes | Unicode, keep keywords plain |
| Your display name | No | Yes | Unicode, costs findability |
| Username (@handle) | No | No | Not possible |
| Poll question and options | No | Yes | Keep plain |
Usernames are restricted at the character level to Latin letters, digits and underscores, so converted characters are rejected rather than discouraged. Anyone promising an italic Telegram @handle is describing something the form will not accept.
The bio, the channel name and the group name are the interesting rows. They are plain strings, which is why converted characters are genuinely useful there and nowhere else on Telegram.
Italics in messages, step by step
- Type the message normally.
- Select the phrase that needs emphasis.
- Press Ctrl+I or Cmd+I, or choose Italic from the menu.
- Check the composer: the phrase should already look italic before you send.
- Send.
Formatting survives editing. Open a sent message, edit it, and the entities move with the text, which is a real advantage over marker based systems where editing around a marker breaks it.
Formatting also survives forwarding within Telegram, because the entity list travels with the message. It does not survive being copied out into a plain text field elsewhere, where you get the letters and lose the styling.
Channel posts deserve the extra care
A channel post is the one Telegram surface that behaves like publishing rather than chatting. It is read by people who did not opt into a conversation, it is often long, and it is frequently the only version of the information.
Native formatting does the structural work here: bold for a heading line, italic for an aside or a source note, monospace for a code, a reference number or a wallet address. Monospace in particular is underused and genuinely useful, because a fixed width face makes l, 1, I and 0 distinguishable.
The channel name above the post is a different matter. It is a plain string, it is what appears in every subscriber’s chat list, and it is what people type when searching for your channel. Styling it costs you discoverability every time someone tries to find you. If you want a decorative element there, put it in the description instead and keep the name plain.
Mobile and desktop differences
The stored result is identical on every client, because formatting lives in the entity list rather than in the text. What differs is how you apply it.
Telegram Desktop and the macOS app. Keyboard shortcuts are the fastest route: Ctrl+I or Cmd+I for italic, Ctrl+B or Cmd+B for bold, Ctrl+Shift+M for monospace in most builds. The selection menu is available too, and the composer shows the styling live, so you can proofread before sending.
The mobile apps. Select the words with a long press, then use the formatting toolbar that appears above the selection. Since the 2025 update that toolbar carries icons for bold, italic, monospace, underline and link rather than hiding them behind a submenu, which made mobile formatting genuinely practical for the first time.
The web clients. Both web versions support the menu and the common shortcuts, though a browser extension or the browser itself will occasionally claim a shortcut before Telegram sees it. If Ctrl+I does nothing in a browser tab, use the menu.
One habit worth forming on mobile: apply the formatting before you add punctuation at the end of the phrase. Selecting a run that ends in a comma often extends the italic entity over the comma, which looks wrong at message size.
When Unicode is the right tool on Telegram
Two situations, and only two.
A plain string field. Bio, channel name, group name and display name have no entity list, so nothing you select will style them. If you want a slanted look there, converted characters are the only route. Convert the phrase in the Italic Text Generator, copy it, and paste it into the field.
A style Telegram does not offer. Telegram gives you bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, monospace and spoiler. It has no cursive script, no small caps, no double struck and no circled letters. A channel description signed off in script has to be converted.
Keep both uses short. What you are pasting is a run of separate Unicode characters, not styled letters, and every consequence in the next two sections follows from that.
Search, and why channel names should stay plain
Telegram’s search matches literal characters across chats, channels and contacts. A converted word is a different sequence of code points from its plain spelling, so it does not come back from a search for the ordinary form.
That matters most in three places. A converted channel name will not be found by someone searching Telegram for your channel. A converted group name is hard to find in your own chat list six months later. And a converted phrase in a message cannot be found by searching that chat’s history, which is how people actually retrieve things in a busy group.
WhatsApp users have hit the same wall for the same reason, and the WhatsApp formatting guide covers the identical trade on a platform with a similar native system. Discord is the closest comparison for a platform where native markup and converted characters live side by side, and the Discord field guide walks through that decision.
Accessibility
Native Telegram italics leave the letters as letters. A screen reader receives the word italic and reads it as a word.
Converted characters are separate code points. Depending on the reader and its verbosity setting they can be spelled out one at a time using full Unicode character names, read as unrecognised symbols, or skipped entirely. A converted channel name is worse than a converted message, because the name is announced on every notification from that channel rather than once.
Because Telegram gives you a native option in every message field, there is no situation where converting a message is the accessible choice. Save conversion for the short plain string fields, and keep those short. What screen readers really announce covers the readers individually.
Try it in Saved Messages
Telegram’s Saved Messages chat is a private space that behaves like a normal chat, which makes it the right place to test.
- Open Saved Messages and type a sentence.
- Select one phrase and press Ctrl+I or Cmd+I. Confirm it turns italic in the composer before sending.
- Send, then edit the message and confirm the italics survive the edit.
- Search Saved Messages for a word inside the italic phrase. It should be found, because the letters are still letters.
- Now paste a converted phrase into the same chat and search for that word. It will not be found.
Steps four and five are the whole argument, done in twenty seconds.
Troubleshooting
Underscores show up instead of italic text. Your client did not parse the markdown. Select the text and use the formatting menu, which is client independent.
The shortcut does nothing. Nothing was selected. Ctrl+I applies to a selection, not to the caret.
Formatting disappeared when I forwarded the message somewhere else. It survives forwarding inside Telegram. Copying the text out into another app gives you the letters only, because the entity list does not travel outside Telegram.
Monospace broke my link. Apply link and monospace separately, or drop the monospace. Overlapping entities on the same range behave inconsistently across clients.
A converted channel name shows as boxes for some subscribers. Their device is missing a font covering that Unicode block. Rename the channel in plain characters if anyone reports it, because a channel name is not the place to gamble on font coverage.
Italics will not apply in a bio. Expected. Bios store a plain string with no entities. Conversion is the only route there.
Questions people ask about Telegram italics
How do you italicize on Telegram? Select the text and choose Italic from the formatting menu, or press Ctrl+I on Windows and Linux and Cmd+I on macOS. Markdown underscores work in many clients but not all.
Does formatting work in a bio or a channel name? No. Those fields store plain strings with no formatting entities. Converted Unicode characters are the only way to get a slanted look there.
Why do my underscores show up instead of italics? Markdown parsing varies by client and build. If the symbols survive the send, use the menu instead.
Does Telegram search find Unicode styled text? No. Search matches literal characters, so a converted word and its plain spelling are two different strings.
Can you format a photo caption? Yes. Captions carry the same formatting entities as messages, so italic, bold, monospace and links all work there.
The rule for Telegram
Telegram is the platform where native formatting wins most clearly, because it stores styling separately from text and therefore keeps every word searchable, editable and readable aloud. Use the menu or the shortcut in every message, caption and channel post. Reserve converted characters for the four plain string fields, keep them short, and keep the channel name itself in ordinary letters so people can still find you.
Behaviour described here reflects Telegram clients as of September 2026, including the mobile formatting toolbar that gained the full set of options during 2025. Formatting shortcuts summarised from SendPulse’s Telegram formatting reference.
