One thing I never knew when I started web design was that italics were not simply a way to emphasise text. The correlation of the HTML <em> tag with the default style being italic text was a design choice made in context of the rest of the default styles. It could easily have been that normal paragraph text was italic and for emphasis it was made regular.

What I find interesting about italics is their origin – matching the hand-written style of lettering in order to fit more text into books (for more detail ilovetypography.com has a great series covering the basics of typography). Something my girlfriend said to me while I was bemoaning her use of Comic Sans (even though it was for a children’s worksheet) was that the children find the letter forms easier to read because they more closely resemble letters the way they are taught to write them. It made perfect sense.

Why then, I wonder, do we rarely see larger blocks of copy set in italic? I believe that part of the reason was because italic text served a purpose such as providing narrow but legible text and saving on ink while more often than not there was no lack of space for text or a need to tighten the purse-strings.  Perhaps there is mileage in the use of italics for purposes we instinctively use regular text for. If done well (as illustrated by Wolfgang Weingart in the photo) it can be visually very striking and compelling.

One last thought is that if children are shown beautiful, elegant italic lettering, at least when learning to write cursive, would their hand writing reflect that?