Italics being undone?

Try this Ellie,

Insert Type tool into the affected text. Maybe two clicks to select a word.

Look at the paragraph style panel: it should show your paragraph style at work and no + sign showing next to (which indicates an over-ride of style)

Next, also look at the Character Style panel: it should be set to None unless you are already using an italic character style. In that case it should be selected to that character style. When you deselect all text, the Character Style should say None. Look out that the character style, if any, does not have a + sign next to it, indicating a manual override.

Clean typesetting has the paragraph style controlling the look of the whole paragraph; while a character style might be applied to one or more characters or words.

Last thought: does your chosen typeface have an italic form?

@ellie_9176

Are your italics made by: 

- applying local formatting - a big no-no?

- applying Char / ParaStyles? 

- effect of GREP Styles in the ParaStyle definition? 

In my experience things don’t just change in an InDesign document. Something changes because something else was changed which propagated to the unexpected alteration. So, how were the titles made italic? Did you apply a character style for italics or select the text then make it italic? If you made it italic, how did you do that? Did you press Comman-Shift-I or Control-Shift-I or did you select the Italic flavour of your font from the Character or Propertiesd panel?

Then, what did you change? For example, did you change the main font for the text? This could be it. Some fonts have a default italic and some don’t. So if you used a font with a default italic (that is, the font definition for Normal contains data defining which different font to use for italics) then changed the font family you may have switched to one that has no  default italic, or a weight that has no default italic (e.g. Family Normal might have a default italic which is Family Italic, but Family Book does not). You might also have deactivated one or more fonts the file uses or be opening the file on a system that does not have the font installed.

My suggestion for the proper workflow…

• Use Paragraph Styles extensively. Even if there is a style you use only once, like the title use a Paragraph Style. This allows you to make some formatting, like leading or spacing, consistent as one style can be based on another style.
• Use a Character Style for the italics. Character Styles are different from Paragraph Styles in that only the changes you make are remembered. A Character Style can include only colour or only a font change. Applying the Character Style to text that already has a Paragraph Style will keep the link to any attribute not defined by the Character Style. In this case, select both the font family and the style.
• See the example below. I created a Paragraph Style called “Body copy” which uses the font Minion Pro Regular. The highlighted word uses the Character Style “italic” which changes only the font to Minion Pro Italic. If I later change Body Copy to use Garamond the italic will remain in Minion Pro because the family is part of the style’s definition. I prefer this, despite the added complexity and steps required because I cannot always predict how a font change will affect CHaracter Styles. Some fonts have an italic while others have an oblique. If I change the family to one that names its italics oblique the style will break.

You should always apply italics via paragraph style if the whole paragraph is talic or via character styles if only some words or letter in a paragraph is italic.

To remove the italic apply a differrent paragraph style or no character style.

You must avoid manual formatting without styles.