How to Highlight Text in Notion?

Notion is a versatile and powerful note-taking and collaboration tool that offers a variety of features to enhance your productivity and organization. One such feature is the ability to highlight text within your notes and documents. Highlighting text can help you draw attention to important details, make specific sections stand out, or simply add visual appeal to your content. In this article, we will explore the different ways you can highlight text in Notion using current features and best practices.

Using Highlight Formatting

Notion includes an easy-to-use built-in highlight formatting option. Follow these steps to highlight text:

1. Open Notion and navigate to the page or document where you want to highlight text.
2. Select the text by clicking and dragging your mouse cursor over it.
3. Once the text is selected, a toolbar will appear above the selected content. Click the T icon (text formatting) in the toolbar.
4. In the dropdown menu that appears, click the highlighter icon (which resembles a marker).
5. Choose your preferred highlight color from the provided options. Notion continues to offer a range of colors, and you can update these colors at any time.
6. The background of the selected text will now have the chosen highlight color while the text color remains unchanged.

Note that using highlight formatting only changes the background color of your text and does not affect the actual text color. For more details on changing background colors, check out this guide on Background color.

Using Code Blocks as Highlighted Text

Another creative method to highlight text in Notion is by using code blocks. Although code blocks are primarily designed for displaying and formatting code snippets, they can be repurposed for highlighting text. Here’s how:

1. Open your Notion page and select the text you wish to highlight.
2. Click the + button at the top left (or type /code and hit Enter) to open the block menu, then choose the Code block option.
3. Paste or type your selected text into the code block.
4. To customize the appearance, click on the three-dot menu icon in the upper right corner of the block and select Properties.
5. Adjust the code block’s background color by clicking the color swatch next to "Background" and change the text color by clicking the swatch next to "Text" if desired.

Using code blocks in this way offers more control over the color scheme and helps achieve a distinct visual effect, though it comes with a styling that differs from standard text blocks.

Additional Tips and Best Practices

• Slash Commands: Notion supports a range of slash commands (e.g., typing /highlight) that help you quickly access text styling. Keep an eye on updates as Notion frequently introduces new shortcuts and command features.
• Consistency: Use highlighting sparingly to maintain readability. Overusing highlights can make important information harder to distinguish.
• Combining Features: Consider pairing text highlighting with other formatting options like bold or callout blocks to further emphasize key points within your content.

Conclusion

Highlighting text in Notion is a straightforward process that can be achieved using either the built-in text formatting option or by leveraging code blocks creatively. Whether you want to emphasize key information, create visual separation, or simply enhance the appearance of your notes, Notion provides flexible methods to suit your style and workflow. Experiment with these options and incorporate additional formatting features to make your pages both attractive and easy to navigate.