# Text Styling
Text in Trackmania can be styled in almost any place you can think of. You may style the name of your map, your nickname or even your chat messages! This guide will give you all you need to get started with text formatting and styling.
### Syntax
All styling is represented in the form of of special control characters that determined the style of the succeeding text.
For text formatting like bold or italic text, they have one control character, whereas colors have 3 (more on that later). Each control character must have a `$` in front of it.
To give you a few examples, the control character `o` will format the text as bold and the control character `i` would format the text in italic. So you would write **`$o`** for bold and **`$i`** for italic and then the text to be formatted.
Example:
`$oTrackmania` would become **Trackmania**
`$iTrackmania` would become *Trackmania*
You can also combine them, so `$o$iTrackmania` would be bold and italic: ***Trackmania***
A more complex example of using them at multiple places in the text for different formatting at different places would be:
`$oThis$z is $o$iTrackmania!` would become: **This** is ***Trackmania!***
### Font Formatting
Here are all the available way to format your text without colors.
Control Character | Formatting | Example |
`$o` | Bold. | `$oTrackmania` becomes **Trackmania** |
`$i` | Italic. | `$iTrackmania` becomes *Trackmania* |
`$w` | Wide text. | `$wTrackmania` becomes **T r a c k m a n i a** (Try this yourself ingame to see it properly) |
`$n` | Narrow text. | `$nTrackmania` becomes Trackmania (Try this yourself ingame to see it properly) |
`$t` | Force uppercase. | `$tTrackmania` becomes TRACKMANIA |
`$s` | Drop shadow. | `$sTrackmania` Try this ingame yourself. Unable to show an example here. |
`$l[LINK]` | Clickable link. | `$lhttps://www.evotm.com` would become [https://www.evotm.com](https://www.evotm.com) and `$l[https://www.evotm.com]Evo` would become [Evo](https://www.evotm.com) |
`$g` | Reset color to default. | `$f00Hello$g Trackmania!` becomes Hello Trackmania! |
`$z` | Reset all styling to default. | `$oHello$z Trackmania!` becomes **Hello** Trackmania |
`$$` | Escape the $ character. | `Give me some $$` becomes Give me some $ |
### Colors
Colors are a bit more complicated as they require three control characters in the form of a hexadecimal number.
#### An introduction to Hexadecimal Color Codes
If you have never heard about the hexadecimal number system (hex for short), you may be wondering what on earth I'm talking about. You are normally used to the decimal number system, where each digit is from 0 to 9 and any other number is a compound of these digits. But in hexadecimal you have 15 digits instead of 10. In hex each digit is from 0 to F (0123456789ABCDEF) with F representing 15.
In Trackmania each color is represented by three hexadecimal characters `RGB` with R being the red channel, G is the green channel and B is the blue channel. So the hexadecimal digit would then represent the strength of it's color channel.
For example, in the color code `F00`, Red would be strength F (15) and green and blue would be 0. This would be a perfect red color. But in the color code `0F0` red would be 0, and green would be F (15) and blue 0. This would be a perfect green.
Another example would be `FF0`, here we have a perfect red and a perfect green combined. Mixing these two colors, red and green, would become yellow. You can also reduce the strength of the channels, for example `660` would become a dark green color.
**Some more examples:**
- `000` is Black
- `FFF` is White
- `888` is Gray
- `00F` is Blue
- `FB0` is Orange
- `FCD` is Pink
- `ADE` is Light Blue
#### How to use colors in Trackmania
So now that you understand how the color codes work, you can now apply them! The syntax is almost the same as with font formatting: `$RGB`
So some examples:
- `$F00Trackmania` becomes Trackmania
- `$0F0Trackmania` becomes Trackmania
### Encapsulation
It is possible to isolate your styling from any outside styling using the `$< Your text and formatting here $>` syntax.
This can be useful some times when your style might interfere with something else for example in the chat, or if something interferes with your styling.
### Resources
#### Text formatting tools
Here are some tools you can use to simplify the styling of your text:
- Trackmania Nickname Generator - https://tm.bloax.xyz
#### Other guides
- Maniaplanet docs - [https://doc.maniaplanet.com/client/text-formatting](https://doc.maniaplanet.com/client/text-formatting)
- Tutorial by Acegikmo - [http://www.tm-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=1767](http://www.tm-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=1767)