Colors

Color draws the eye, which is exactly why a little goes a long way. Use it to carry meaning a reader picks up at a glance, like red for a risk, green for done, or a yellow highlight on the one line that matters, and it helps. Scatter it about and readers stop noticing it.

Text color

Select the words, choose Text color on the toolbar, and pick one of eight:

Gray, Blue, Teal, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red and Purple.

Default color, at the end of the palette, takes it off again.

Highlight

A highlight colors the background behind the words, like a marker pen. Select the words, choose Highlight color on the toolbar, and pick one of twelve, six light and six stronger:

Light blue, light teal, light green, light yellow, light red, light purple.

Blue, teal, green, yellow, red, purple.

No highlight takes it off. For a quick one, the highlight button in the menu over selected text, or Ctrl+Shift+H, adds a plain yellow highlight without asking for a color.

In the dark theme

Both stay readable when you, or a reader, switch to the dark theme: text colors turn lighter, and highlighted words keep dark lettering on their colored background.

Good practice

• Give each color one meaning, and keep to it. If red means “at risk” on one page, it should not mean “important” on the next.

• Never let color carry the meaning alone. Some readers cannot tell red from green. Write “at risk” as well as coloring it, or use a Status label, which has its words built in.

• For a whole paragraph, use a panel. A colored box reads better than a colored paragraph. See Panels.