Font Style

The font-style property indicates if the font should be italic, oblique, or normal. Only italic and normal are well supported by the browsers. The following style rules (in a STYLE tag or in a style sheet file) produce the following results:

Style Rule HTML Results

EM { font-style:normal; font-weight:900; color:red; }

Let's get real here.
Let's get real here.

.legal {font-style:italic;}

However, he isn't per se given that right.
However, he isn't per se given that right.

A.footnote {font-style:oblique;}

As early as <A HREF="note123.html" CLASS="footnote">1934</A> solutions were being developed.
As early as 1934 solutions were being developed.

You are probably familiar with italic, which means that the font is slanted and possibly curled. Italic adds a little emphasis to the lettering. Normal means that the letters stand straight up and down. Normal is most often used to set to normal an element such as  which is usually rendered as italic.

Oblique means that the letters are slanted. There is some confusion about the difference between oblique and italic. The problem is that in traditional typesetting terminology, oblique means to take a standard font and slant it, while italic is its own type of slanted curly font. Netscape does not understand oblique at all and MSIE renders italic and oblique in the same way.