Oblique
Also called: oblique, italic, slanted or sloped novel
Oblique or italic is a variant within a typeface in which the letters lean slightly to the right. Otherwise, the design of the letters is identical to the roman variant. This is in contrast to the italic variant, whose letters are more graceful than the standard letter.
In contemporary typography, italics are widely used to emphasize words and to indicate titles or proper names, among other things. When no italic version of a typeface is available, the oblique version, if there is one, is often resorted to. Or the normal letters are simply distorted by the computer so that they are skewed, although such "fake italics" will produce less elaborate letters than the emphasized official oblique versions. To give a word emphasis, it is sometimes made bold instead of italicized.
Especially many sans-serif fonts have an oblique version instead of an italic. Oblique better preserves the clean, simple character of the font.
