CSS font-style: The Font Style Property

The CSS font-style property specifies the style of the font for HTML elements, including normal, italic, and oblique.

How to Use CSS font-style

The font-style property specifies the style of the font in CSS and works with any text-based HTML element. As values, font-style accepts normal, italic, or oblique.

/* Apply italic style */
p {
    font-style: italic;
}

/* Apply oblique style */
h1 {
    font-style: oblique;
}

/* Set style to normal */
footer {
    font-style: normal;
}

When to Use CSS font-style

Making Text Italic in CSS

You can use the font-style property to make quotations or certain phrases italic, improving readability for lengthy articles.

.quote {
    font-style: italic;
}

Emphasizing Keywords

In academic writing, you can use italics to emphasize key terms or phrases when you first introduce them.

.key-term {
    font-style: italic;
}

Artistic Styling

You can use italics to add a unique aesthetic touch to headers, titles, or any text that needs artistic styling.

.title {
    font-style: italic;
}

Examples of Using CSS font-style

News Websites

A news website might make quotes italic to make them stand out from the narrative.

blockquote {
    font-style: italic;
}

Book Review Websites

Book review websites often italicize book titles within their content to set them apart from the surrounding text.

.cite-book {
    font-style: italic;
}

Online Programming Tutorials

Programming tutorials like Mimo might italicize comments in code examples to distinguish them from the executable code.

.comment {
    font-style: italic;
    color: #6a737d;
}

Learn More About CSS font-style

Interplay with Font-Weight

You can combine font-style with font-weight to enhance text emphasis without altering text structure.

emphasis {
    font-weight: bold;
    font-style: italic;
}

Advanced Text Effects

You can also pair font-style with other CSS properties like text-transform and text-decoration. By combining text effects, you can create visually distinct sections within your content.

.fancy-text {
    font-style: italic;
    text-decoration: underline;
    text-transform: uppercase;
}

The Font Shorthand Property

Using the font shorthand, you can define CSS styles for font-related properties with a single property. The shorthand allows you to set font-style, font-weight, font-size, line-height, and font-family. This makes font useful for applying multiple font-related styles to the same element while optimizing for readability.

.body-text {
    font: italic bold 16px/1.5 Arial, sans-serif;
}

CSS Italic vs. Oblique Font Styles

Italics and oblique styles are similar but have distinct differences in typography. Italic typefaces use unique character shapes, offering more than just a slanted version of a font. Often, italic font styles include stylistic nuances like cursive font elements. Oblique styles are essentially a regular font slanted at an angle, without any unique character adaptations.

Italics are useful for emphasis in text and highlighting quotes, important terms, or foreign words. Oblique styles are a good choice when no italic version of a typeface is available.

p.quote {
    font-style: italic; /* Preferred for formal emphasis on quotes */
}

p.comment {
    font-style: oblique; /* Modern emphasis, suitable for digital interfaces */
}

The HTML Tag and CSS font-style

Like the CSS font-style property, the HTML <i> tag also makes text on a web page italic. However, using only CSS to style elements helps you keep structure (HTML) separate from presentation (CSS). Also, misuse of the <i> tag can lead to other issues, like confusing search engines and screen readers.

Instead of <i>, consider using a <span> tag and a CSS class to italicize phrases.

<p>The word <span class="italic">al dente</span> comes from Italian culinary terminology.</p>

.italic {
    font-style: italic;
}