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I just asked this question: SSRS 2008 partial string formatting. The first answer I got totally missed the point of the question (that answer is now deleted).

I think my question would have been clearer if I could have changed the color of a (non-code) word to red, so I could show an example of what I wanted.

Is there a way to do this?

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    Is bold not good enough?
    – SLaks
    May 26, 2011 at 1:19
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    @SLaks - If I had tried to show that I need colors by using bold in my question it would only confuse matters even more. My quesion I was asking is about colors, not bold. (The report needs colors (unless there is a way to have 5 different kinds of bold). I need to differentiate 5 different "In-Text" values in my report. Bold would only indicate "is a Value" (Boolean). I need to be more specific.)
    – Vaccano
    May 26, 2011 at 3:13
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    @Vaccano : With the emerging of some site in Arts and Graphics the need for colour become increasing. I'm suggesting to update the question to reflect this.
    – user2284570
    Jul 30, 2014 at 21:34
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    Post your question as an Image mode... hope this help
    – user267513
    Aug 14, 2014 at 7:56

2 Answers 2

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I'd say the best thing to do here would be to just show a screenshot of the final result. That way, you can show it with all of the color and rich formatting that you want. Remember that Stack Overflow provides free image hosting services. All you have to do is click the toolbar button to upload one.

Of course, you should still keep the plain text content around as well for accessibility purposes. Some of our readers are visually impaired, as are all search engines (a very important segment of our audience), and some of us just like to be able to copy sample text from a question as we work out a solution.

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  • so the answer is "no", then?
    – Doktor J
    Mar 16, 2012 at 3:00
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    @Doktor: Yes, the answer is no. There's no way to display text in a color.
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    Mar 16, 2012 at 4:16
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    Unless you're in a SE that supports LaTeX (cf. this question)
    – Geremia
    Nov 13, 2014 at 21:22
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It can be done on the sites where Latex (more clearly, its Javascript implementation named "MathJax") is enabled. These are mostly the science-related sites and their metas. On the SO, it is not enabled (it might have a little performance reason. It might have "funny side-effects" in code, for example Latex code must go between $...$, imagine what could it do on a site with many source fragments).

For example, on the MathSE, a $\color{red}{This is red.}$ will be made red:

enter image description here

(The \text{} thing is only because MathJax renders everything in italic and removes spaces by default - it is optimized for formulas, not for text.)

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  • Btw, I have never seen a misused colorization on the science sites. If it would happen, the result would be likely a quick edit and some downs. Actually, even colors are only used rarely, and never annoyingly (it is a way to emphasis important parts of the formulas). But I think, it would not work so on the SO. On the facebook, posting text as image is a supported feature, i.e. you can post a sentence as an image. Many of new SO users are adapted that culture. I believe that allowing colors on the SO would lead to disastrous consequences, but enabling MathJax would be useful.
    – peterh
    Jan 18, 2021 at 22:10

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