Italic Type - Examples

Examples

An example of normal (roman) and true italics text:

The same example, as oblique text:

Some examples of possible differences between roman and italic type, besides the slant, are below. The transformations from roman to italics are illustrated.

• a "round" or one-storey a,
• an e whose bowl is curved rather than pointed,
• an f with a tail (known as a descender),
• a k with a looped bowl, a k with a ball terminal,
• a p with an intersection at the stem (ascender),
• a v and w with swashes and curved bottoms,
• and a z with the stress on the horizontal strokes as opposed to the diagonal vertical one.

None of these differences are required in an italic; some, like the p variant, do not show up in the majority of italic fonts, while others, like the a and f variants, are in almost every italic. Other common differences include:

• Double-loop g replaced by single-loop version.
• Different closing height where the forked stroke intersects with the stem (e.g. : a, b, d, g, p, q, r, þ).
• Bracketed serifs (if any) replaced by hooked serifs.
• Tail of Q replaced by tilde (as in, for example, the Garamond typeface).

Less common differences include a descender on the z and a ball on the finishing stroke of an h, which curves back to resemble a b somewhat. Sometimes the w is of a form taken from old German typefaces, in which the left half is of the same form as the n and the right half is of the same form as the v in the same typeface. There also exist specialized ligatures for italics, such as a curl atop the s which reaches the ascender of the p in sp.

In addition to these differences in shape of letters, italic lowercases usually lack serifs at the bottoms of strokes, since a pen would bounce up to continue the action of writing. Instead they usually have one-sided serifs that curve up on the outstroke (contrast the flat two-sided serifs of a roman font). One uncommon exception to this is Hermann Zapf's Melior. (Its outstroke serifs are one-sided, but they don't curve up.)

Outside the regular alphabet, there are other italic types for symbols:

• Ampersand resembles eTil ligature more than the Roman version (e.g.: ITC Garamond)
• Asterisk is rotated instead of slanted (e.g.: Bookman Old Style, ITC Garamond).
• Question mark resembles a reversed Latin S.