# Using BOLD in posts

#### Peter

##### Well-known member
MHB Site Helper
In a recent post on the Analysis Forum (Perfect Sets in R^k are Uncountable) I tried to 'bold' some characters since they were vectors or points in k-space (and hence bold in the text I was referring to) ... however i ended up with a string of display style errors ...

I was suspicious that my use of the WYSIWYG editor may be allowing extra or extraneous characters to be inserted ... ... so I tried to switch editors ... but on clicking on the A/A button, to my dismay, my post as typed so far, disappeared ...

NOTE: I am using Firefox on a Mac ...

#### Bacterius

##### Well-known member
MHB Math Helper
You don't bold LaTeX with the usual tags, LaTeX doesn't use those. In LaTeX you use \mathbf. In LaTeX text mode you would use \textbf but there is no use for text mode on a forum since text mode is just "not LaTeX". Basically, LaTeX is completely independent of the forum's formatting system, which is actually a good thing but means you do need to learn to use LaTeX separately.

Example (remove the spaces inside the bold tags):

Code:
[ B]Bold ordinary text[ /B]
$$A \mathbf{x} = \mathbf{b}$$
$$c_1 \mathbf{u_1} + c_2 \mathbf{u_2} + c_3 \mathbf{u_3} = \mathbf{0}$$
Gives:

Bold ordinary text
$$A \mathbf{x} = \mathbf{b}$$
$$c_1 \mathbf{u_1} + c_2 \mathbf{u_2} + c_3 \mathbf{u_3} = \mathbf{0}$$

#### Peter

##### Well-known member
MHB Site Helper
You don't bold LaTeX with the usual tags, LaTeX doesn't use those. In LaTeX you use \mathbf. In LaTeX text mode you would use \textbf but there is no use for text mode on a forum since text mode is just "not LaTeX". Basically, LaTeX is completely independent of the forum's formatting system, which is actually a good thing but means you do need to learn to use LaTeX separately.

Example (remove the spaces inside the bold tags):

Code:
[ B]Bold ordinary text[ /B]
$$A \mathbf{x} = \mathbf{b}$$
$$c_1 \mathbf{u_1} + c_2 \mathbf{u_2} + c_3 \mathbf{u_3} = \mathbf{0}$$
Gives:

Thanks Bacterius ... that clears that up!

Appreciate your help ...

Peter