Make text slanted with Unicode italic characters. Four weights are included: italic, bold italic, and two sans-serif variants.
| Input | Output |
|---|---|
| italic text (Italic) | ๐๐ก๐๐๐๐ ๐ก๐๐ฅ๐ก |
| hello world (Italic) | โ๐๐๐๐ ๐ค๐๐๐๐ |
| Note (Bold italic) | ๐ต๐๐๐ |
Useful for emphasis in a plain-text field that has no italics button, for book and film titles in a caption, for gentle emphasis in a line of text, and for stylised logos and headings. For documents you control, the editor's italic button is better: it keeps the text searchable and editable.
Because U+1D455 was not assigned to the italic block โ the lowercase italic h is drawn with the โ from the Letterlike Symbols block. The result reads correctly as an h, just with a slightly different stroke that has become the standard look for Unicode italic.
Bold italic is a heavier slanted serif-style set with digits included. The sans variants are slanted versions of the sans-serif math alphabet, so they look cleaner and have no digits. Pick by how the text will sit next to your other text โ serif styles pair with serif, sans with sans.
Partly. Screen readers handle these blocks inconsistently: some read the letters normally, others skip or misread them, and search ignores them entirely. Use italics for visual emphasis, and keep meaning-carrying words in plain text.
Some services allow it, many reject anything outside ASCII for handles and display names. Where it is allowed it looks striking, but the name becomes hard to mention or search โ so think twice for a brand handle.