Hey there,
(I’m actually posting this for a friend who is unable to post)
In scrivener 2.0.5(9496) for Mac I am unable to use italics. When I highlight font and clicked the Italics symbol next to the Bold symbol nothing happens to my text. I’ve looked at my preferences but haven’t found anything that seems to be the cause of the problem. Bold and underlining word fine, but Italics for lack of a better word, is a dud.
Also, when I try to select italics from the drop down text menu it’s grayed out, while bold and underlining isn’t.(Obviously a problem)
Scrivener doesn’t fake italics (some word processors will do this by just slanting the regular typeface), so if the font you’re using doesn’t have an italics variant installed on your computer, you won’t be able to use italics. That’s the most likely problem. Just check by opening up the font palette (cmd-T) and looking in the typeface list for the chosen font to see if there is an italic version.
As MM says, it sounds as though you are just using a font that doesn’t support italics. Scrivener uses the OS X text system, the same as Mail for OS X, TextEdit and so on, and italics only work if the font supports it (you will find the same on most Mac programs outside of Word). Most fonts do support italics, though, there are only a few (such as Lucida Grande) that don’t.