How to bold only a single character in a word?

Question

I have a description list that looks like follows (MWE):

\documentclass{report}
\begin{document}
\begin{description}
\item[Author's Action (\textbf{A}ccomplished or \textbf{P}roposed)] \textbf{A}
\end{description}
\end{document}

Here what I would like to do is to only bold the first letter of the words Accomplished and Proposed. Using the method shown in MWE, I see that the entire word is rendered in bold. Is there a way to only bold the first character of each word?

Answer 1

1: use format=\normalfont from enumitem package

\documentclass[11pt]{report}
\usepackage{enumitem}

\begin{document}
\begin{description}[format=\normalfont]
\item[Author's Action (\textbf{A}ccomplished or \textbf{P}roposed)] \textbf{A}\\ 
\end{description}
\end{document}

or 2: redefine \descriptionlabel

\renewcommand*\descriptionlabel[1]{\hspace\labelsep
                                \normalfont #1}

Answer 2

In the default description lists, items are shown in bold.

To avoid this, use \mdseries:

\item[\mdseries Author's Action (\textbf{A}ccomplished or \textbf{P}roposed)] \textbf{A}\\ 

If you need this for the whole document, you may define a macro

\newcommand{\ITEM}[1]{\item[\mdseries #1]}

and use it as follows

\ITEM{Author's Action (\textbf{A}ccomplished or \textbf{P}roposed)} \textbf{A}\\ 

Or you can just redefine \descriptionlabel:

\renewcommand{\descriptionlabel}[1]{{\mdseries #1}}

and keep the original syntax.