UsableTypeTypography for the World Wide Web

style guide

Font Styles

The font-styles property is used to set font styles of normal, italic, or oblique.

em {font-style:italic;}

Simple as that really, the only possible complication is in comparing italic and oblique text.

Italic text is nearly always a new font face within a certain font family. The italic face can be quite different to the normal face, for example having extra and more elaborate serifs. The oblique face is simply a slanted version of the normal, upright text. A font family may have an oblique face, but if not, the user agent will create one by slanting the ‘normal’ face.

User agents respond to the font-styles property in a fairly simple way. If the requested style is available as a separate face, then that face will be used in the document. If there is no italic face in the family then oblique may be substituted. However, the user agent should not use an italic face if an oblique style has been requested, it should simply generate the slanted text on the fly.

font-style
Values: normal | italic | oblique | inherit
Initial Value: normal
Applies to: all elements
Inherited: yes

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