span font-style: italic;
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml' xml:lang='en'> <head> <title>font-style</title> <style type='text/css'> body { font: 14px sans-serif; line-height: 30px; } span { background: yellow; border: 1px solid gold; } span.oblique { font-style: oblique; } span.italic { font-style: italic; } p.naught { font-family: "Monotype Corsiva"; font-style: italic; } </style> </head> <body> <p> <span class='oblique'>oblique</span> and <span class='italic'>italic</span> </p> <p class='naught'> encountered. </p> </body> </html>