How it works
This italic text generator swaps each letter for a slanted character from Unicode's mathematical alphabets, so the slant survives a paste. It holds 158 characters and not one italic digit. Some apps strip or block these characters, and screen readers may read them badly.
Read the full guide
Three slants, then a bold one with feet
The large card sets your line in Italic serif. Italic sans and Bold italic sans sit below, then Bold italic, the serif alphabet, for bold italic text with feet. Numbers and punctuation stay upright in every row.
The h is a physics constant
Unicode had an italic h long before it had an italic alphabet: U+210E, Planck constant, from June 1993. When the alphabet arrived in March 2001, slot U+1D455 was left empty, so the h in Italic serif is a symbol from physics. Unicode's own note calls it simply a mathematical italic h. The two sans alphabets have no hole.
Tips
- If the h looks unlike its neighbours, copy Italic sans. Mathematical sans-serif italic small h belongs to the same run as the letters round it.
- Numbers stay upright: the sample keeps a plain 40. Bold, double-struck, sans-serif and monospace have digits. No italic style does.
- The table ends with two letters no key types: Mathematical italic small dotless i and its j, for maths that puts an accent there.
Questions and answers
Is this an italic font generator?
No font is involved. Italic fonts copy and paste badly, because a font stays behind in its app. Here each letter is a character of its own, such as Mathematical italic small a, U+1D44E, made for the variables in formulas, so the slant travels.
Should I use this or real italics?
Where formatting exists, use it. Wikipedia's table of keyboard shortcuts gives Ctrl+I or Cmd+I. Markdown takes one asterisk each side. HTML has em for stress and i for a ship's name or a thought. These characters are for boxes with no formatting.
Can it make italic numbers?
No. Unicode's table of mathematical styles lists italic, bold italic, sans-serif italic and sans-serif bold italic with letters only, so a 4 stays a 4. A slanted number needs a real typeface: numbers in 24 faces draws the digits as a picture.