italic
Sign in to saveAlso known as Italic type, italics
font style characterised by cursive typeface and slanted design
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- typeface
Show 5 more facts
- Commons category
- Italics
- different from
- cursive
- inspired by
- cursive
- opposite of
- Roman type
- CSS property
- font-style: italic
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~23 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Aldus Manutius' italic, in a 1501 edition of Virgil. Italic is only used for the lower case and not for capitals.
In typography, italic type (or italics, plurale tantum) is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Along with blackletter and roman type, it served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, italics normally slant slightly to the right, like so. Different glyph shapes from roman type are usually used – another influence from calligraphy – and upper-case letters may have swashes, flourishes inspired by ornate calligraphy.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “italic” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.