Sometimes you'd like to apply styles to your text. For example, the passage about the newspaper would be more proper if we italicized The London Times's name. Instead of using a menu command to italicize text as you would in a word processor, you place special characters around text to format it. Italics, for example, use //s around text:

:: The London Times
If you believe what you read, the world is quiet. //The London Times'// front page is awash in some lurid tale of a fellow named John Lee whose execution failed thrice, and thus proven innocent -- or at least innocent enough to serve a life sentence.

Here's a table of the formatting available in Twee:

Formatting Source Code Appears As
Italics //text// text
Boldface ''text'' text
Underline __text__ text
Subscript H~~2~~O H2O
Superscript meters/second^^2^^ meters/second2
Monospace {{{text}}} text
Bulleted list * one
* two
  • one
  • two
Numbered list # one
# two
  1. one
  2. two
Horizontal line ----

Lists in particular are useful for setting off choices at the end of a passage. Although it feels natural to leave an empty line between a paragraph and a list, this creates extra whitespace that looks a little strange. Here's what it should look like:

:: Start
It's a dark and stormy night aboard the Orient Express. You can't sleep; something about the motion of the train disturbed you subtly. So instead you have elected to spend the night in the dining car, sipping coffee and perusing [[the newspaper|The London Times]].

You hear the door to the car open behind you.
* [[Look up]]
* [[Continue reading]]

If there's a particular kind of formatting that you'd like to use that isn't supported natively by Twee, you can put HTML source code directly into your story's text by surrounding it with <html> and </html>. This passage, for example, blinks:

:: Oh no!
The bomb's timer now reads: <html><blink>5:00</blink></html>. You sure hope that's five hours, not five minutes.

If you don't know how to write HTML, then you might take a look at this tutorial, or search for others on the Web.