Abakada: Back to Basics > Language References > CSS Properties > Font Properties > font-style Property

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Sets or retrieves whether the object’s font style is italic, normal, or oblique.

CSS	{ font-style: 'normal' | 'italic' | 'oblique' }
Script	object.style.fontStyle = sStyle ]

normal	Font is normal.
italic	Font is italicized.
oblique	Font is italicized.

The property is read/write with a default value of normal; the cascading stylesheet ( CSS ) attribute is inherited.

The possible value oblique is available as of Microsoft^® Internet Explorer^® 4.0. Internet Explorer^® 4.0 renders italic and oblique identically.

The following examples demonstrate use of inline event handlers to dynamically change an element’s font-style characteristics. Both methods yield the same effect.

The sample below defines a font-style attribute in an embedded stylesheet, and invokes calls to the stylesheet in response to mouse events.

<style>
   .itals { font-style: italic }
</style>
...
<p onmouseover="this.className='itals'" onmouseout="this.className=''">
   ...
</p>

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The sample below uses inline event handlers to dynamically set an object’s font style in response to mouse events.

<p onmousedown="this.style.fontStyle='italic'"
   onmouseup="this.style.fontStyle=''">
   ...
</p>

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font, @font-face Rule, font-family, font-size, font-variant, font-weight