Oblique type

Historically, it was normal for all Latin-alphabet serif fonts to have true italics, but in the late nineteenth century some "sloped romans" were created by European and American foundries, particularly for display type and headings.

[10] The printing historian and artistic director Stanley Morison was for a time in the inter-war period interested in the oblique type style, which he felt stood out in text less than a true italic and should supersede it.

[12][13] Morison wrote to his friend, type designer Jan van Krimpen, that in developing Perpetua's italic "we did not give enough slope to it.

"[9][a] A few other type designers replicated his approach for a time: van Krimpen's Romulus and William Addison Dwiggins' Electra were both released with obliques.

[b] Morison's Times New Roman typeface has a very traditional true italic in the style of the late eighteenth century, which he later wryly commented owed "more to Didot than dogma".

[18] Adrian Frutiger and other prominent designers have defended obliques as more appropriate for the aesthetic of sans-serif fonts, while Martin Majoor has supported the use of true italics.

Slanting the regular style to create an oblique was particularly often done on early computer and phototypesetting systems in the 1970s and -80s to save time and memory space, especially in lower-quality printing of ephemera and newspapers.

A simply slanted (L) and corrected (R) example of oblique type
Serif typefaces with an oblique are rare, but the Central Type Foundry's "De Vinne" (the words "American Lining System" in this specimen) is an early exception.
Unusual backslanted oblique lettering on a Norwegian banknote of 1807
Three sans-serif " italics ". News Gothic , a 1908 grotesque design, has an oblique. Gothic Italic no. 124, an 1890s grotesque, has a crisp true italic resembling Didone serif families of the period. [ 17 ] Seravek , a modern humanist family, has a more informal italic in the style of handwriting.