How to Print Formatted Text to a Terminal

Author Info

Last Updated: April 24, 2025

Printing normal text to a terminal is easy. But what if you want to emphasize something? Or use different colours for better readability? This wikiHow will teach you how to add colours and formatting to your terminal text.

Steps

Download Article

1
Understand the difference between echo and echo -e. echo without the -e prints whatever you type. Try typing echo "Hello\n": it will print Hello\n. echo -e, however, will use special symbols if you put the correct letters or numbers after a backslash. Try typing echo -e "Hello\n": it will print the word Hello and a new, empty line.
2
Understand the form of escape sequences. Escape sequences are what you'll use to format your text.
- Every escape sequence begins with the ESC character. It is not visible and not on the keyboard. But you can still enter it with a backslash and the correct number: since this character is ASCII 27, you can write it either as \033 (octal) or \x1b (hexadecimal).
- The ESC character is followed by a [. This square bracket marks the beginning of the actual sequence.
- After the [ are the numbers and letters that actually decide how a text will be coloured and formatted. You can use multiple codes at once, for example, to make a text bold and red at the same time. The different numbers and letters are then separated by a ;.
- The last letter is an m. It marks the end of the escape sequence.
Advertisement
3
Change the colour of the text. The numbers 30 to 37 are different colours you can use for your text. For example, type echo -e "\033[31mHello red world" to have the text Hello red world appear in red.

Text colours

Number Colour

30
black

31
red

32
green

33
yellow

34
blue

35
magenta

36
cyan

37
white
4
Change the background colour. This is done the same way as changing the text colour, but instead of 30 + some number, it's 40 + some number. For example, a red background would appear with echo -e "\033[41mThis has red background".

5

Change the style. The text can be made bold, italic, crossed out, hidden, and underlined.

*Style change codes*
Number	Result
1	bold text
2	faint text
3	italic text
5	slowly blinking text (on some systems)
6	fast blinking text (on some systems)
8	invisible text
9	crossed out text

6

Reset format to default settings. When you change the background or style to some non-default value, you will notice that it is still different in the next line. Although this stops after your user- and computer name, having parts of the next line in a different format doesn't look good. It can be avoided using a reset code.

*Reset codes*
Number	Resets
0	everything
22	intensity (bold/faint)
23	italics
24	underline
25	blinking (on the systems that support it)
28	invisibility
29	crossing out
39	text colour
49	background colour

Expert Q&A

Search

Add New Question

Ask a Question

200 characters left

Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered.

Submit

Tips

You don't have to use the echo -e command to display text with escape codes in a command line. You can also use the output function of many programming languages, like print() in Python or cout in C++.

Thanks
Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
If the changed format doesn't stop in a new line, you can print \033[0m (the sequence that resets everything) to return to the normal format.

Thanks
Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

Submit a Tip

All tip submissions are carefully reviewed before being published

Name

Please provide your name and last initial

Submit

Thanks for submitting a tip for review!

Warnings

Not all these codes are supported on all terminals. If escape codes are supported, but a specific code isn't, the text will just show in the default font, style and colour.

Thanks
Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
Make sure to reset all formatting (with \033[0m) after you have printed everything you wanted. This is especially important if you're writing a program or script: you don't want to confuse the user by making their terminal look different, especially if your format is hard to read.

Thanks
Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0