Bold Inflation

"You know, Frankie, emphasizing random words does not a talented writer make!"

— Linkara, Atop the Fourth Wall, review of The Dark Knight Strikes Again

In short, characters speaking with unusual emphasis in normal conversation. Back in the day the low quality paper used in Comic Books tended to make italic text difficult to see, so letterers used bold, or more typically, bold italic text instead. Modern lettering evolved from the old conventions. Used occasionally, bold phrases can be statements of power. However, in the hands of a clumsy artist, it can irritate the reader and discredit the character, which is why there will be no more Self-Demonstration for the rest of the introduction.

Generally a comic and webcomic trope because of its print nature, though in some cases this literary atrocity has been inflicted upon the world in film and video game form. It generally looks somewhat less silly in comics than in plain text, although this may just be because readers have been used to seeing it there since The Golden Age of Comic Books. So much so, some readers just ignore it entirely. It also shows up better than italics when using cheap, low-quality printing techniques on cheap, low-quality paper.

It should be noted that this is not always the writer's fault when this happens. Oftentimes, especially in comic books, the editor will indicate to the letterer that he wants certain random words bolded, on the assumption that a reader will become bored by plain black text without any change to spice it up. Fortunately, this practice is becoming a Discredited Trope.

An equivalent in manga is to place dots next to the characters to emphasize a specific part of the line (like this あ・), although this is far less common than bold text in comic books.

Relatedly, the practice of using exclamation points instead of periods to end sentences, because the little dot may be considered hard to see in some printings of newspaper strips and comic books, also creates an effect of excessive emphasis for people who aren't used to it.

May be a subtrope of Painting the Medium. Inversion of Creepy Monotone. See also Pothole for a related phenomenon on This Very Wiki.

See Rainbow Speak where the intent is merely to inform the player of a key item or topic for further discussion.

See also Emphasize EVERYTHING. AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle is a very similar but distinct trope that mostly applies to spoken dialogue.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure uses this technique when dropping plot-relevant terms. Interestingly enough, Dio Brando does this to his own name from Part 3-onwards, being known simply as "DIO".
• Kill la Kill uses this at least Once per Episode to great effect, even Breaking the Fourth Wall with its trademark HUGE RED BLOCK KANJI on occasion.
• The page on This Very Wiki, the manga, and the anime for Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee all emphasize Heart, because Heart Is an Awesome Power.
• The manga of Aria the Scarlet Ammo uses the "dot" variant very often in the Japanese version. Usually in Kinji's inner monologues, or when a character is giving Exposition.

Comic Books

• Every single comic published by Archie Comics (such as Betty, Jughead, Sonic, etc) comic uses excessive bold, often on unimportant words. Also uses the convention of exclamation points instead of periods! Apparently the people of Riverdale are constantly screaming out of rhythm. Their Sonic comic has at least gotten better about it since Ian Flynn took over writing. The rest, eh...
• Every single Disney comic uses also excessive bold, random emphasizing and exclamation points as sentence finishers. Especially in Duckburg.

• Daredevil and Spider-Man foe The Rose, son of Kingpin, had a henchgirl, Delilah whose power, apparently, was to randomly speak in a different font. And throw tanks. What would happen if she met Deadpool? The Universe would explode.
• Comic book author James Robinson has a tendency to place emphasis on words that really shouldn't have it.
• In a Batman story reprinted in "Batman in the Fifties," Bats and Robin reminisced about the various Batarangs they'd used over the years, all while keeping us in suspense about what Batarang X was. This meant that the word "Batarang" appeared multiple times in nearly every panel. Every use of the word batarang in this story filled with batarangs as it discussed every batarang ever used since the invention of batarangs leading up to the introduction of a new batarang bolded every use of the word batarang until you want to kill all the writers with batarangs and never want to hear the word batarang again in your life. (If anything, that last sentence is a gross understatement of what it's like.)
• Superman stories of the era were no different. Basically, if it's a proper name, or if it involves the word "super" in any way, it gets bolded.
• Inverted in Watchmen with Rorschach, who is only shown speaking with bold once, during the "Crimebusters" flashback in chapter 2. (And if you asked him, he'd say that wasn't Rorschach: Rorschach didn't really exist yet.) Other characters describe him as speaking in a flat monotone.
  • The only other time in which Rorschach uses bold text is when he tells Doctor Manhattan to "DO IT!" shortly before Doctor Manhattan vaporises him.
• The Transformers (Marvel): Whenever a character was referred to by name for the first time — particularly during Budiansky's run as the writer, when new characters were introduced — their names were bolded. This was possibly to make sure the reader knew who was who, with the slew of new characters that tended to appear every two issues or so — or Budiansky's tongue-in-cheek way of sticking it to Hasbro executives insisting the newest toys got the spotlight.
• An issue of Spider-Man had a scene lampshading this. Doctor Doom was being escorted through an airport by two American security agents, one of whom was Captain America in disguise. Dr. Doom threatens the two agents and refers to himself in the third person, with DOCTOR DOOM stylized. Cap asks, "How do you do that... talk in all capitals like that?"
• In comments in this interview, Ryan North places the blame for this partly on comics' insistence on putting all dialog and text in ALL CAPS.
• Intentionally avoided in Strangers in Paradise, since Terry Moore felt it was unnecessary when writing for an adult audience.
• Characters in Adam Warren's comics — especially in Empowered — often use huge, bold, underlined capital letters for emphasis.
• Comics writer Geoff Johns (The Flash, Justice Society of America, Green Lantern) has a tendency to place the emphasis on words at odd places in a sentence for no apparent reason. It's not that bad, but it does make one scratch their head from time to time. The same goes for Frank Miller.
• Marvel's Thor and Throg (Frog-Thor) speak in a different text, due to them being Gods. Interestingly, Ares doesn't. The Asgardian font is meant to represent the All-Tongue. Asgardians do not speak English or any other Earthly language, but rather a magical language that can be understood by all people, and that is what the font (and archaic phrasing) is meant to show. However, some letterers/writers sometimes apply the font to Asgardian characters who should not be speaking the All-Tongue at that time, such as the addition of Angela.
• While Marvel's Ultimate X Men is no worse of an offender than any other comic, it features at least one scene of Professor Xavier sending an email liberally sprinkled with italicized words, making him sound like a crazy person on the Internet. As well as literally fully capitalising some words. In a widely published essay. And he wonders why people still think he's insane...
• A signature of Jack Kirby's writing, especially during The '70s, and especially in the Fourth World saga. Unlike many examples on this page, The King's choice of emphasis usually does reflect a fairly natural (if overly urgent) speech cadence.
• Averted in most French-Belgian comics, which mainly use bold writing for loud speaking, strong emphasis, and when it really alters the meaning of a sentence. As such, American-style bold inflation is often seen as an example of Viewers Are Morons. Use of exclamation marks and ellipsis is widespread, though.
• Jacques Tardi bolds every proper name in his dialogue.
• The Dirty Pair comics by Adam Warren and (occasionally) Toren Smith are drawn in a manga-influenced style, but the text has more American-style bold inflation than is usual for English translations of manga.
• Chick Tracts do this a lot, too.
• Bill Willingham's Ironwood has a bit of a problem with this, too. Perhaps he thought the presence of boobs would distract from the irregular cadences.
• Warrior, the only comic with Destrucity. Would you expect anything less from the Ultimate Warrior?
• German translations of superhero genre comics which play the trope straight tend to keep it faithful (arguably instantly doubling the Narm level in comparison). Random case in point: some Dracula comic where our heroes boast they have stakes made from cantrememberthespeciesofwood that kill even Dracula forever (no objections to bolding here) but also sneak in the totally irrelevant info into the sentence that they borrowed them from a local peasant (in stark contrast to, whatnot, fetching it on Ebay). Dracula, impressed by all this boldness, does a French leave to save the franchise.

Comic Strips

• Brenda Starr is a major offender.
• Buckles is an example of both this and overuse of exclamation points!
• In a variation, in his later years on Mandrake the Magician, Lee Falk (who wrote the strip into his 90's!) had... a great... fondness... for ellipses... And also! Sentence fragments! But Mandrake was always awesome anyway. The strip's current writer doesn't seem to have these quirks.
• Mark Trail features this almost like a full character, alongside its beautifully drawn animal pictures! Also there's something about humans punching humans in there somewhere. I dunno the details.
• Pearls Before Swine once accused Soap Operas of an oral version of this, imitated in-comic by bolding every third word. "We can do that!"

Fan Works

• Commonly used in fanfic by beginning writers, to unnecessarily stress words as part of directly transcribing their thoughts into text. It's generally considered good practice to use such things sparingly.
• Those Lacking Spines, a parody of Kingdom Hearts fanfic:
  He was so badass his font was bolded. "And now you shall learn, and you shall fear, and you shall learn to fear the wrath... of Jeffiroth!" he cackled maniacally.
• Twilight Revised uses this to illustrate Twilight's unhealthy attachment to "Celestia". Twilight especially puts a lot of emphasis on Her. The exact Amount depends on her mental state.
• The Pez Dispenser and the Reign of Terror has a bit of a problem with this.
• In Hope on a Distant Mountain, if a line is bolded, that indicates it's the speaker's equivalent to Naegi's catchphrase from the trials: "You've got that wrong!"
• The fanfiction.net version of Oni Ga Shiku Series uses bold inflation to render the Boss Subtitles and Limit Break techniques. The Archive of Our Own version instead uses imbeded images for the Boss Subtitles. The purpose is to emulate the Like a Dragon videogame experience as much as a text-only platform can.

Literature

• Edward D'Eath spoke like this to himself (with italics in place of bold) in the Discworld novel Men at Arms. This was to signify that he was an absolute nutter. "He could think in italics. Such people need watching. Preferably from a safe distance."
  • Similarly, in Discworld, multiple exclamation points are a sure sign of a diseased mind.
• The book series Fearless puts what the writer (or other member of the Powers That Be) thinks is the most badass sentence on each page larger and in a different typeface than the rest, instantly transforming it into Narm.
• Dorothy L. Sayers uses this (with italics) in several of her books to show the annoying speech patterns of certain characters. Miss Katharine Climpson, the harmless-seeming spinster turned enquiry agent in the Lord Peter Wimsey series of detective novels, often speaks in italics, conveying her gossipy nature. She does it in her own writing, too. This is meant to indicate her old-fashioned, Victorian outlook; overuse of underlining is often mentioned as a characteristic of Victorian women's writing, especially in letters. Characters in the Anne of Green Gables series often do it too.
• One word: Superdictionary.
• In American Psycho Patrick Bateman tends to emphasise unusual words in his sentences. It's not exactly the same trope, but still tends to fit the spirit of the thing.
• Angie Sage, author of the Septimus Heap series, tends to bold all Magykal words. Some people find it annoying and/or condescending.
• John Hodgman's Complete World Knowledge books lampoon the use of this trope in their titles.
• The conversational style of The Catcher in the Rye involves a lot of italics.
• Katherine Mansfield was another author who used this as a characterization technique. In the short story "Bliss," the character who emphasizes every other word is being a pretentious drama queen.
• In Animal Farm, when Napoleon rhetorically asks who is responsible for the destruction of the windmill, he gives the answer "SNOWBALL!"
• Some printings of The Bible, particularly the King James Version, use italics to denote words added by the translators that were not present in the original Greek or Hebrew (usually added to better follow English grammar and thus make it more readable). Some media use [brackets] instead. This results in the odd effect of having minor articles and prepositions "emphasized" while the key words of the text are plain. It's also not uncommon for print editions of the Bible to use red for the name of God or the word "Lord" when it refers to him. Words spoken by Jesus are also often printed in red or put in all-caps to make the Son of God's lines stand out.
• A Prayer for Owen Meany: Owen's voice is said to be very peculiar and is rendered in all caps, which also fits his status as a Messianic Archetype.
• The Sandman: The Dream Hunters: In the original novella, Morpheus's speech is rendered in bold text to emphasize his power.

Live-Action TV

• Captain James... T... Kirk! Shatner has since said that he played him that way because real people don't have writers or every single thing they're going to say planned word for word. He wanted to sound like he was coming up with his words as he said them.
• Top Gear. Jeremy Clarkson's speech is the best example of this... in the world.
• Putting unusual emphasis on random words? Could there be a better description of Chandler's signature mode of speech on Friends?
• How I Met Your Mother's Barney Stinson. His use of this is Legen waitforit DARY. LEGENDARY.

Print Media

• Naturally, above-the-fold headlines are usually emboldened in order to indicate their importance (and to get people to buy the paper). However, there's a longstanding print tradition for the trope to be literally inverted (white text on a black background) for issues of extreme urgency or tragedy.
• Boot, the precursor to Maximum PC, had one of the Letters to the Editor complain about this. It contained semi-boldfaced words and stated that the writer read the FIRST and LAST issue because they BOLDFACE every third WORD. The editor's reply was that you CAN'T win them ALL.
• MAD has does this constantly ever since its days as a comic book. Authors especially like emboldening nouns and adjectives! Gratuitous Yiddish expressions will always be bold as well, schmuck!
• The Sun and similar disreputable British Newspapers ABUSE this trope CONSTANTLY so that their READERS can pick out the IMPORTANT words.
  • Russell Brand, when dissecting an unflattering Sun article about him in his stand-up routine, drew the audience's attention to this trope. Some time afterwards, the Sun had another article about him, in which they seemingly lampshaded it, emboldening words such as WAS and HAD.
• PC Magazine columnist John C. Dvorak randomly scatters bolding throughout his technology columns.
• The Plain Truth, the house magazine of a particularly strange fringe-Christian denomination^note his Worldwide Church of God, a rather dogmatic and autocratic denomination, achieved mass circulation by distributing the magazine for free at news-stands round the world, was OVERLY FOND of this! Church fuhrer Herbert W. Armstrong was SO CONCERNED that his readership understood the ONE TRUE WAY OF GOD that not a sentence went by without EMPHASIS being placed on the KEY POINTS of the GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST! Brethren, do NOT let yourselves be DECEIVED by FALSE PROPHECY!

Tabletop Games

• Kevin Siembieda, creator of Rifts, has a deep and abiding love for unnecessary amounts of italics in any Sourcebook that he writes.
• Most of the old Traveller RPG material insists on putting the name of the game system in bold. While it looks okay in small doses, it can look a little awful when you have to list all of the Traveller systems, like Classic Traveller, Mega Traveller, Traveller: The New Era. Similarly GURPS (that's right: bold, italic and all caps). It frequently ends up looking silly given that the system has an enormous volume of splatbooks and the writers load them with references to one another.
• In novels of Warhammer 40,000 nearly all Space Marine Dreadnoughts are depicted as speaking in this manner. Example: Bjorn the Fell-Handed in Battle of the Fang. This is a justified case of Painting the Medium, as Dreadnoughts are Mini-Mecha with a critically wounded Space Marine inside, with their voices being amplified via speakers, and the bold text is the only way to render this well in text. The games featuring Dreadnoughts avert this, instead being able to properly depict a Dreadnought's mechanically bass voice
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: The massive HERO archetype has its namesake capitalized throughout its many sub-archetypes: 'Elemental HERO', 'Destiny HERO', 'Masked HERO', and so on. In fact, several monsters had to have their carts reprinted just to have part of their name capitalized from 'Hero' to 'HERO'. To take this even further, cards like Oscillo Hero are not part of the archetype simply because the name isn't in all caps. This is a Woolseyism to bring the English-language TCG in line with the Japanese-language OCG where the "HERO" archetype is written with Latin letters while non-included "hero" cards use katakana. Doing this cleared that some cards could affect all "HERO" cards without having to label each distinct sub-group on the card text.^note Prior to the renaming, cards would have to specify they affected "Elemental Hero", "Destiny Hero", "Evil Hero", or what have you by the full name each time, eating up a lot of text-box space.

Video Games

• The G-Man from the Half-Life series speaks like this, emphasizing his otherworldly nature.
• Resident Evil had it quite clearly. Especially Barry Burton.
• POKéMON:
  • Originally, POKéMON^note For those wondering why the é in POKéMON is left uncapitalized, it's because the font the games use leaves no room for an accent mark over a capital E. games wrote the names of every proper noun in all caps. In other words, you play as a POKéMON TRAINER in the KANTO, JOHTO, or HOENN region on a quest to get every BADGE from every GYM LEADER and eventually take on the ELITE FOUR, having to go through the likes of TEAM ROCKET, TEAM AQUA, or TEAM MAGMA on the way. Pokémon Diamond and Pearl ended this practice, but their generation still capitalized the names of individual Pokémon due to backward compatibility with the Game Boy Advance games, which use the old method of capitalization (for example, Diamond and Pearl would still say PIKACHU instead of Pikachu, but would say Town Map instead of TOWN MAP). Black and White did away with this as well, meaning no more ALL CAPS at all.
  • However, getting a Pokémon from one of your old games via the Poké Transfer Lab will still feature its name in all-caps. (For example, your Pikachu will still be PIKACHU.) However, if it can still evolve, its evolved form's name will not be in all-caps (PIKACHU evolved into Raichu).
  • If one of these Pokémon get transferred to Pokémon Bank, its name will be decapitalized.
  • Though the all-caps style has been retired, several gameplay-relevant terms that wouldn't typically be proper nouns in real life are still capitalized (e.g. Ability, Egg, etc.). A comprehensive list of such words can be found here.
  • Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire use this as a Mythology Gag in the game's intro, where PROF. BIRCH uses the old style of POKéMON capitalization when the player character is watching his monologue on the POKéNAV. The rest of the game uses proper capitalization like Pokémon X and Y, however.
  • In POKéMON EMERALD, the enemy TRAINERS in the BATTLE FRONTIER SPEAK IN TERSE PHRASES IN ALL CAPS, complete with No Punctuation Period much like Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal below.
    TRAINER: I SWALLOW SLUDGE TO TRANSFORM MYSELF
  • The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games have the main player name in blue, the team members' names in yellow and the other NPCs in light blue.
  • In Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal, the entire game is written in all caps. This makes the nonsensical, Translation Train Wreck dialogue of the game that much funnier.
• The Super Mario Bros. series is a repeat offender, most apparent in the Paper Mario games.
• Donkey Kong Country
  • The GBA remake of Donkey Kong Country spells King K. Rool's name as "K.ROOL" for no reason at all.
  • In Donkey Kong 64, whenever Funky Kong says K. Rool's name, it is rendered in shaky text.
• Brave Fencer Musashi went one worse and put words in red on a seemingly random basis.
• Also done in Ōkami, and is just as annoying due to Issun wanting to explain everything.
• Disgaea's Captain Gordon, Defender of Earth! who manages to constantly talk in bold font and emphasize whatever he says in a ridiculously epic manner akin to Captain Kirk on Crack! As such, fans see it as customary to write his name only in bold font and with the gratuitous use of exclamation points! This is particularly obnoxious because no such thing appears in the game, which just uses voice tracks.
  • How else can you possibly convey the speech patterns of CAPTAIN GORDON, DEFENDER OF EARTH! in text?
• Zelda games from the N64 onwards are very bad for this. Dialogue about certain items or characters are put in green or blue or even red!
  • Words appear in all the colors of the rainbow in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Especially when referring to the Sages/Temples. Light- Forest- Fire- Water- Spirit- Shadow. Yes, Shadow is written in pink. Purple is usually reserved for other things, as is orange.
  • This gets unintentionally hilarious in the ending of Ocarina of Time when Ganondorf screams at you in ALL CAPS. Because you can rename Link to anything you want, it doesn't affect your protagonist's name at all. Thus, it all comes off like a Hong Kong Dub in a dramatic moment. "CURSE YOU, ZELDA! CURSE YOU, SAGES! CURSE YOU, Link!"
• Kingdom of Loathing does this to give you hints on one late-game puzzle. You have to insert a series of keys to progress, and if you put in the wrong sequence, you get the message "perhaps if you concentrate a little harder, you'll figure it out." Sure enough said sequence is the Konami Code.
• Beneath a Steel Sky does this ALL the way through the GAME with every line of DIALOGUE being LITTERED with words in CAPITAL letters. It's really ANNOYING.
• In Tyrian, the datacubes and ship descriptions are often sprinkled with bolded text. Names and values are almost always bolded, but sometimes, it is done for emphasis. For instance: The Gencore Maelstrom is a refined Phoenix with an additional 2cm of main hull. It also features deluxe plush seating with extra-wide armrests and synth-velour lining.^note Note the content of the bolded text. "Gencore Maelstrom" and "Phoenix", name; "2cm", value; "extra-wide armrests" and "synth-velour lining", sheer emphasis.
• Final Fantasy VIII:
  • The game tends to emphasize certain [keywords] due to their plot importance rather than context within the sentence.
  • The Fake President Deling speaks this way. i.e.: "Ahh... So what did you have in stORE for me had I resiSTED...? Why doN'T you teLL mE..."
• Meta example: titles of Final Fantasy games are always written in all caps in official sources. This results in bold inflation whenever the franchise or a specific game is referred to in descriptions.
• Arcturus Mengsk in StarCraft and StarCraft II. Though it doesn't show up in subtitles, you can hear it in every other word he says.
• And in StarCraft II, there is MAAR, who TALKS like THIS ALL the DAMN TIME.
• While Ace Attorney doesn't have bolding, 2 characters still overuse emphasis as one of their quirks: Florent L'Belle constantly CAPITALIZES his WORDS, while Enoch Drebber makes sure to put at least one orange word/phrase/part of a scream in each text box until when he demands Naruhodo show proof that he was happy to leave the University because he lacked talent.
• In Old World Blues, the DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, Dr. Borous has this as a Verbal Tic, which serves to make him an even bigger ham than he already is. If questioned about this, his response is:
  "DRAMA? There is no DRAMA in Science! As I learned in High School, Science! is an intellectual pursuit DEVOID of bestial emotions!"
• Team Fortress 2 has MONOCULUS!
• Lampshaded in Borderlands 2, where one of the loading screen messages notes that TORGUE guns not only fire EXPLOSIVE rounds but are LOUD and require EXCESSIVE USE OF CAPITAL LETTERS.
• Final Fantasy used the all-caps version later seen in the early Pokémon games due to text limitations in the NES era. Major locations and items were always noted in all-caps, most frequently seen in the regular rejoinder to "Revive the Power of the ORBS!" This also applied to whenever anyone talked about a future opponent. Thus, you knew that Matoya was going to help you eventually, but when you hear about ASTOS, you knew you were going to gear up to face him.
• Do It For Me: The girlfriend talks like this along with Caps Lock, to make her voice sound more demanding.
• Treasure of the Rudra: The giants has this as their speech quirk where they randomly CAPITALIZE a word or two in EVERY sentence.
• Deltarune: The original        Starwalker loves to emphasize random worlds in gold and insert odd         spaces as part of their Word-Salad Humor.

Web Comics

• Dominic Deegan falls into this all too often. The words in bold tend to be the usual puns, and while their emphasis would be weird in normal conversation, it serves to highlight those puns to the more moronic listeners (and the more moronic readers).
  • Though most of the time, the bolded words are completely random, and may just be due to Mookie writing the text by hand, causing people to be emphasizing words in their speech for no reason.
• Spoofed in Sluggy Freelance: When a mission was announced, the wrong parts of the mission were emphasized (specifically, the part where it was noted that Anyone Can Die). The speaker immediately berated the sound technician for putting reverb on the wrong part of the statement, to which he replied "Oh, my bad!"
• Played for Laughs in Narbonic with ANTONIO SMITH, FORENSIC LINGUIST, who also only speaks his name in ALL CAPS.
  • So does OTHAR TRYGGVASSEN, Gentleman Adventurer!
• Tycho from Penny Arcade, who feels the need to use italics every second sentence.
  • Talk out the strip, though, and the bold/italicized text works with the emphasis. It's not random, like most of the examples above.
• Dandy and Company used to suffer from this, perhaps due to the cartoonist's comic book influence.
• T Campbell of Penny and Aggie has a nasty habit of bolding all the time, and often in the least intuitive places.
  • Another weird textual habit of T's (and he has many — note that there's no period after his first "name") is that he'll often italicize only the particular syllable being stressed. This shows up most often in Fans!.
• In a variation, The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! uses underlines for emphasis, instead of boldface or italics.
• How I Killed Your Master uses this for emphasised words.
• Taking after video game inspirations, in MS PAINT ADVENTURES, during the INTRODUCTION OF A NEW CHARACTER a number of IMPORTANT KEYWORDS, including their NAME, will be ENTIRELY CAPITALIZED. This does not happen during normal narration, save for certain game jargon such as the STRIFE SPECIBUS. On rare occasion simply used for emphasis of a phrase.
  • On a related note, Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff also does this. Of course, considering the nature of the comic in question, more often than not the inflated words aren't the ones which would be sensible to emphasise, and even the physical form of the emphasis is inconsistent - sometimes it's boldface, sometimes it's enlarged text, sometimes it's text enlarged even further, and sometimes it's colored.
• Waterworks: Nearly every single noun is bolded, perhaps as a nod to video games. This is only in the original forum thread version. The mirror eschews all this boldage.
• In Dragon Mango many plot-relevant words, especially nouns, are bolded, as well as many other words, sometimes seemingly at random.
• In El Goonish Shive, Edward Verres' exclamation "I am an endless barrel of exposition!" is delivered this way.

Web Original

• Repeatedly Used On This Very Wiki, especially when I Am Not Making This Up is invoked. Articles that use Bold Inflation:
  • A Mech by Any Other Name
  • Fun with Acronyms
  • Lousy Alternate Titles
  • Bold Inflation
  • Most trope pages with a "Don't do this" disclaimer at the end of the intro - this tends to show up on subjective tropes, or tropes that shouldn't have Real Life examples.
  • This also tends to show up on pages with unmarked spoilers, to warn readers of just that.
  • Any time we mention BRIAN BLESSED or Captain Gordon, Defender of Earth!.
  • HULK TALK LOUD ON HIS PAGE!!!!!! LOTS OF BIG LETTERS AND SHOUTING!!!!!!! GRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
    • CIAPHAS CAIN, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM! is similarly treated by many of his adoring fans.
• More websites than you can possibly imagine. The tendency of people to do this was parodied, along with many other things, at the Real Ultimate Power page.
• Jackie Harvey, fake columnist for The Onion, parodies this trope as it applies to gossip rags.
• foolquest. Bold, italic, underline, colored text, hyperlinks, highlightings, text boxes, giant words.
• SCP Foundation: The ad copy for SCP-1657:
  Need more punch to your breakfast? Grocery store eggs not working for you? Wish you could have a goddamn masculine omelet for once in your goddamn miserable life? Then buy the MAN EGG. MAN EGG will make you MANLY.
• Like the comic strips he reads, The Comics Curmudgeon will engage in this once in a while, though he did lampshade it once.
• The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles: The Ottawa REDBLACKS' official branding guidelines insist that the team name must always be written in ALL-CAPS and in 1000 point font. In Tim Tebow's memoir of his game against the REDBLACKS, he doesn't use the larger font size, but he makes sure to properly capitalize REDBLACKS—because he thinks that's hilarious.
• Gary: Landlord of the Flies: Several of the email exchanges between Gary and Gabe have moments where Gary bolds certain words for emphasis. Gabe notes that they were originally red and in a much larger font.

Web Videos

• Robert from Scamalot describes a nonexistent novel as being very passionate and sensitive.
• Many a video like on YouTube or other sharing sites will use caps in the title to emphasize what it is they're trying to push, resulting in video titles like "COWS are secretly SPIES for the ILLUMINATI!" or "The GOVERNMENT is hiding ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS in your SILVERWARE!"

Western Animation

• Squirrel Boy: Rodney says his cousin is "Good at pretending to be something [he's] not". When his cousin notices the bold inflation, Rodney says he doesn't have any control over it.
• In The Weird Al Show Fatman segments, the narrator does an audio version of this trope with various words being shouted.

Real Life

• Incredibly long-winded essayist Bill Whittle actually makes this one work.
• The explanatory signs in the Roman Gardens at Chester increase the size of the text for words that might be considered important. When this happens on every line it tends to distract from the flow of the text.
• Francis E Dec used this multiple times, although it was underline inflation, as his rants were written on a typewriter.
• A Multiple Choice Form Letter sent to BRIAN BLESSED used this in the negative responses.
  I am (pleased/sorry/too busy) to tell you that your request (has been accepted/has been declined/is utterly ridiculous, NOW BEGONE).

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