italic uses a font family's dedicated italic variant, if one is available, which is often genuinely hand-designed with different letterforms rather than simply a slanted version of the regular characters, while oblique instead requests a mechanically slanted version of the regular upright letterforms, used as a fallback when a font lacks a true italic variant at all. In practice, browsers often render oblique identically to italic when the requested font doesn't provide a distinct oblique variant either, artificially slanting the regular font as a last resort, though this synthetic slanting can look visually different, often less refined, than a font's genuine, purpose-designed italic letterforms.

1Understanding Font-style

💡

italic and oblique aren't purely interchangeable — italic requests a font's genuinely hand-designed italic letterforms if available, which often look meaningfully different, not just slanted, from the regular style, while oblique specifically requests a mechanically-slanted version of the upright letters instead.

editor.html

em {
  font-style: italic;
}

localhost:3000

2Practical Example

Here is a real-world application of Font-style showing how it is used in production CSS code.

editor.html

.no-italic {
  font-style: normal;
}

<cite class="no-italic">Some Book Title</cite>

localhost:3000

3Best Practices

Follow these guidelines when working with Font-style:

1. Use italic as the standard choice for emphasizing text or denoting titles, relying on a font's genuine, dedicated italic letterforms when the loaded font family provides them

2. Recognize that requesting italic on a font family with no true italic variant typically falls back to a synthetically slanted rendering, which can look less polished than a purpose-designed italic

3. Reserve font-style: normal for explicitly resetting italicized text back to upright, such as overriding a default italic style on a specific element like <em> or <cite>

⚠️

Tip: italic and oblique aren't purely interchangeable — italic requests a font's genuinely hand-designed italic letterforms if available, which often look meaningfully different, not just slanted, from the regular style, while oblique specifically requests a mechanically-slanted version of the upright letters instead.

editor.html

em {
  font-style: italic;
}

localhost:3000

Examples

Example 01Basic Usage

em {
  font-style: italic;
}

Example 02Advanced Example

.no-italic {
  font-style: normal;
}

<cite class="no-italic">Some Book Title</cite>

Best Practices

Use italic as the standard choice for emphasizing text or denoting titles, relying on a font's genuine, dedicated italic letterforms when the loaded font family provides them
Recognize that requesting italic on a font family with no true italic variant typically falls back to a synthetically slanted rendering, which can look less polished than a purpose-designed italic
Reserve font-style: normal for explicitly resetting italicized text back to upright, such as overriding a default italic style on a specific element like or

Interview Question

Why can text rendered with font-style: italic sometimes look noticeably different, not just slanted, compared to the same text in its regular, upright style?▼

Hint: Think about whether a font's italic variant is typically produced by simply slanting the regular letterforms, or by an entirely separate, deliberate design process.

A genuine italic font variant is very often not simply the regular letterforms mechanically slanted at an angle, it's typically an entirely separate, deliberately hand-designed set of letterforms created by the font's original designer, frequently featuring genuinely different letter shapes, different proportions, and stylistic flourishes, like a distinctly cursive-influenced lowercase 'a' or 'f', that don't exist at all in the regular upright style. When a browser renders font-style: italic and the loaded font family actually provides this genuine, separately-designed italic variant, it uses those distinct letterforms directly, which is exactly why italic text can look meaningfully, sometimes dramatically, different from a simple slanted version of the regular text. Only when a font family lacks a true italic variant does the browser fall back to synthetically slanting the regular letterforms as a substitute, oblique-style, which does look like a simple mechanical slant of the same shapes, rather than the more distinctive appearance a purpose-designed italic variant typically provides.

Exercises

MediumPractice using Font-style in a real scenario.

View Solution

em {
  font-style: italic;
}

Frequently Asked Questions

Why can text rendered with font-style: italic sometimes look noticeably different, not just slanted, compared to the same text in its regular, upright style?▼

Related Functions

Font-weightFont-familyText-transform