How to highlight text in LaTeX

In this tutorial, I will show you how to highlight text in LaTeX.

I am going to keep this tutorial as simple as possible.

If you think that changing colors can be considered as highlighting, then I recommend you to read this once:

• How to set page background and text color in LaTeX?

Highlight text in LaTeX using \hl command

We can highlight any text using soul package and \hl command.

See the below example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{soul}
\begin{document}
I love reading LaTeX tutorials on \hl{Codespeedy.}
\end{document}

This only underlines the text.

Let’s make it better.

Using xcolor package with \hl

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{soul}
\usepackage{xcolor}

\begin{document}

This is \hl{highlighted text} with default highlighting color.

\end{document}

Output:

Change the highlight color in LaTeX – Soul package with \hl command

Using the below code, you can change the highlight color using soul and xcolor package.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{soul}
\usepackage{xcolor}

\DeclareRobustCommand{\hlgreen}[1]{{\sethlcolor{green}\hl{#1}}}

\begin{document}
This is a \hlgreen{highlighted words with green} in LaTeX.
\end{document}

Output:

Highlight text using \colorbox

\colorbox{colorname}{highlighted text} – We can use this command to set the highlight color for the text in our LaTeX document.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}

\begin{document}

This is \colorbox{red}{highlighted red text} in LaTeX.

\end{document}

Output: