Italic type

In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, such fonts normally slant slightly to the right. Italics are a way to emphasise key points in a printed text, or when quoting a speaker a way to show which words they stressed. One manual of English usage described italics as "the print equivalent of underlining".

The name comes from the fact that calligraphy-inspired typefaces were first designed in Italy, to replace documents traditionally written in a handwriting style called chancery hand. Ludovico Arrighi and Aldus Manutius (both between the 15th and 16th centuries) were the main type designers involved in this process at the time. Different glyph shapes from roman type are usually used – another influence from calligraphy – and upper-case letters may have swashes, flourishes inspired by ornate calligraphy. An alternative is oblique type, in which the type is slanted but the letterforms do not change shape: this less elaborate approach is used by many sans-serif typefaces.

Italic type was first used by Aldus Manutius and the Aldine Press in 1500, in the frontispiece of an edition of Catherine of Siena's letters (although the first complete book in italic was an edition of Virgil dedicated to Italy, published the following year). According to Lynne Truss, Manutius invented the italic typeface. Based on the humanist cursive script first developed in the 1420s by Niccolò de' Niccoli, it served as a condensed type for simple, compact volumes. The punches for these types were cut by Francesco da Bologna (whose surname was Griffo). In 1501, Aldus wrote to his friend Scipio:

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