Should the overuse of colored text be discouraged?

Question

I have just edited this question, because apart from some spelling mistakes the asker had colored a good portion of the text (not the equations!), almost as if they wanted to convey what they felt were the important bits, or even the intonation of the text (why in the world would one highlight a "but"?).

As some had pointed out in the comments there, this practice made the question (a valid question, otherwise) very difficult to read and understand. Now the asker is requesting that I revert the question to its older likes, but I couldn't find relevant meta post to link to them.

Should this use of color be discouraged?

Answer 1

Colored text can be useful. I can only think of one example at the moment, which is for highlighting correspondences between different parts of a piece of text, like so: $\frac{d}{dx} (\color{green}{x^3} + \color{blue}{x^2}) = \color{green}{3x^2} + \color{blue}{2x}$

Colored text is not useful for merely emphasizing or highlighting a bit of text; italics or bold should be used for this instead.

When colors are used merely for emphasis, or in a way which does not convey any meaningful information, then they are merely a distraction and should not be used.

So let's look at a brief quote from the original post:

The above $\color{Red}{\text{fake}}$-$\color{Teal}{\text{definition}}$ look likes much more simpler to understanding; at least for me.

• If my proof is $\color{Green}{\text{true}}$; then why $\color{Blue}{\text{John M. Lee}}$ did not use this $\color{Teal}{\text{definition}}$?

The colors here don't convey any information, so removing them was the right call, and they should not be re-added.

Answer 2

Please note the sarcasm.

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I don't see any $\color{purple}{\text{problem}}$ with this, adding $\color{red}{\text{c}}\color{orange}{\text{o}}\color{green}{\text{l}}\color{blue}{\text{o}}\color{purple}{\text{r}}$ to text shouldn't reduce $\color{#12dd13}{\text{readibility}}$, nor should any other $\LaTeX$, such as $\boxed{\text{boxes}}$ $\require{cancel}\cancel{\text{or cancels}}$, even though markdown already provides most of anything you need such as strikeouts. Especially if I insist on using $\color{#5555dd}{\text{different colors for each set of words}}$ and some of the colors are simply so $\color{yellow}{bright}$ that I cannot read them. I would also assume that the it doesn't bother anyone if I omit the \text so that my words display $like~so$, or $\mathbb{LIKE~SO}$ when we can use asterisks to write like so and LIKE SO.

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By the way, please DO NOT use yellow. It's literally impossible to read on a white background.

Answer 3

Yes. Yes.

A thousand times yes.

Markdown provides enough methods to draw attention to different parts of text, though bold and italic and even bold italic, not to forget

block quotes

when one wishes to quote a large section of text, to make using colors via MathJax completely unnecessary. Not only that, but a post written in a rainbow of colours is overly distracting and more often than not more difficult to read.

There is no reason to abuse MathJax to format text on this site. Lots of Stack Exchange sites get by without it (by virtue of not having MathJax enabled). So can we.

Answer 4

preamble:

I strongly second Tanner Swett's answer that judiciously using coloured text to highlight correspondences is advantageous, while using coloured text for emphasis is tacky.

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An oft-repeated suggestion is that, taking cognizance of colour blindness, colour use should be avoided when creating posts. I wonder how much this wisdom bears scrutiny: I'm not knowledgeable about colour blindness, but it has always seemed to me that such advice may be premised on the false assumption that colour-blind folks aren't able to discern colours.

A quick Google search reveals that there are colour palettes that are colourblind-friendly (perhaps related to colour contrasts). Apparently, one acceptable colour combination is $\color\red{\text{red}}$ & $\color{blue}{\text{blue}}.$

Could users who are knowledgeable about this topic please expand this post to add insights and and practicable suggestions. Thanks!

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A recent comment from the main site:

• As a little disability hot-tip, red/green is a bad color combination for colorblindness. $\color{blue}{\text{Blue}}$ and $\color\orange{\text{orange}}\quad$ (or $\color\purple{\text{purple}}$ and $\color\orange{\text{orange)}}$ is one of the best combinations to guarantee that everyone reading your question can see the colors, which is really important if the colors are relevant!

  - comment by HallaSurvivor