Don’t Commit the Type Crime of Applying Faux Italic in Microsoft Word
In an earlier essay on Typographic Discipline I discussed apostrophes and quotation marks. Those are important, and they are the most common typographic errors I see every day. In this post I want to bring to your attention another common typographic atrocity that is allowed (some would say encouraged) by Microsoft Word, namely, the ability to apply “italic” styling to any typeface, even if the designer of that typeface did not intend for it to be italicized. Likewise, you can easily make type bold in Word, even if it wasn’t designed to be bold (more on that another day). Indeed, William Caslon, Claude Garamond, and many other fine typographers are rolling in their graves at the typographical injustices that are possible in Microsoft Word.
The above sample was typed in Microsoft Word, and the Italic button was clicked to make it “italic.” That doesn’t work! Use real italics instead, and show some class.
Type design is an art form, one practiced by studious and attentive people with a mind for detail and the desire to spend months or years designing things that have noble purpose, but which most people simply ignore. Type designers will spend entire afternoons working on the subtle interior curve of the bracket of a capital T, or miss lunch over the descending part of the lower-case y because that’s what typographic design is all about. When a type designer makes a Roman alphabet – one that is designed to stand upright – she does not intend for that alphabet to be sloppily sloped by Microsoft Word! (To be fair, one can do this in Adobe InDesign also).
A typographic designer will spend a year working on the Roman, then spend an another year working on the Italic variant of an alphabet.
It is not a casual thing to design an italic typeface. A single typeface is the result of thousands of hours of work in the studio of a serious typographer. And Microsoft Word can destroy it all in a click of the mouse. And the problem is that people do this all the time and they think it looks good. Au to the contrary! (as they say in French). It looks HORRIBLE!
So don’t do it. The best way to stay out of trouble is to avoid using the little I icon in Word.
True, for many typefaces, Word will automatically apply the proper italic fonts (if you have them installed). But in some cases it will happily skew the roman version, with nasty results.
Instead, choose a real italic typeface to use for emphasis. It’s only slightly more work. Just go to the Font menu and choose the associated italic font of the one you’re currently using. If it’s not there, and you really want italics, you need to switch to a different typeface.
Make your type look professional and thoughtful by being a smart typographer. Always remember, even though you have the ability to do atrocious things in Microsoft Word, you should avoid the temptation and do it right.
More Resources To Master Type and Typography
CreativePro Week is the essential HOW-TO conference for creative professionals who design, create, or edit in Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and Microsoft PowerPoint.
Featuring over 30 expert speakers and 75 sessions and tutorials, CreativePro Week offers five days of in-depth training and inspiration, all in one place. No matter your skill level, you’ll learn techniques and best practices you can start using immediately to improve your productivity.
Members get a special discount on registration! Sign up today.
 |
Please, would you be so kind as to name some fonts which are truly italic available from Adobe Fonts, and/or Fonts.com? I use Skyfonts using Fonts.com as a source from time to time.
Thank you very much,
David
I suspect people who compose layouts in Word don’t care, and will never care, about typography.
Wrong accent mark on très
Brian,
There is no question at all that artificial italics and embolding is at best poor practice and at worst “a crime against typography.”
Two observations, though.
First, ironically, there are some font families that actually define their “italic” styles as simply obliqued versions of their standard style (i.e., each glyph definition is simply an obliqued version of the standard glyph definition). This is not that uncommon with some sans serif font families (although some of these obliqued styles are at least labeled as “oblique” as opposed to “italic”). Similarly, some font families have “compressed” or “condensed” styles that provide glyph definitions that are simply horizontal axis compressed versions of their standard width styles.
Secondly, with regards to Microsoft Word, there are two major versions of Microsoft Word – Microsoft Word for Windows and Microsoft Word for MacOS with decidely different font selection mechanisms.
I believe that the behaviour that you describe is that of Microsoft Word for MacOS. MacOS actually enumerates fonts in a manner that Word sees regular, italic, bold, and bold italic (for example) as four distinct fonts. You can indeed directly select the font and style (from the flyout) in the font menu. For example, if you want Times New Roman Italic, from the font menu you can select Times New Roman and from the flyout select Italic to get Times New Roman Italic. HOWEVER, if a font family does indeed have a real italic style, you can indeed get real Times New Roman Italic by selecting Times New Roman from the font menu and then clicking the ‘I’ icon and get actual Times New Roman Italic, not an obliqued version of Times New Roman Italic. You only get artificial italics (i.e., obliquing) if the font family doesn’t have an italic style. The same is true for bold! AND if you expect cross platform compatibility with Windows for the Word document, you had better choose the regular style from the font menu and select italic and bold styles via the ‘I’ and ‘B’ icons respectively!
For Microsoft Word for Windows, you absolutely DON’T have the choice of style from the font menu on the ribbon. Only the base font is listed there. If you want italic, bold, or bold italic, you either must access them via the ‘I’ and ‘B’ icons respectively OR alternatively by right clicking on selected text, select character and from the dialog presented, select the font family name in one part of the dialog and the desired style from a second part of that same dialog. Note per above, if you open a MacOS Word document in Windows Word, any font family and style combined font name will likely cause problems including font substitution.
– Dov