I’m sure by now we all take italics for granted, whether we use it for emphasis or in our citations. But how did these slanted letters become a thing?
The history of italics starts in 15th century Venice and 2 dudes: a printer Aldus Manutius and his type designer Francesco Griffo. From Aldus’ published book in 1500, Epistole di Santa Caterina da Siena, we see just a sneak peak of Italics printed in the illustration of the book to the left and heart on the right.
Aldus was dedicated to publish Greek and Roman classics, but more specifically, Greek and Roman classics in small format. To produce small books for scholars at a low cost, he needed to save as much space as possible. Therefore, he had a type designed based off of informal letters done in calligraphy handwriting.
Enter Italic Type.
Aldus’ type designer, Francesco cut the new italic type only in lowercase letters to which he paired with Roman capitals. An example of this odd italic and non italic pairing can be seen in the first page of Virgil’s Opera, published by Aldus himself. It is the first book to include the italic typeface as the body text.
Manutius was very excited about italics and wrote to his friend:
“We have printed, and are now publishing, the Satires of Juvenal and Persius in a very small format, so that they may more conveniently be held in the hand and learned by heart (not to speak of being read) by everyone.”
Later on, slanted uppercase letters were shaped to complete the Italic type family we know and love.
Sources:
https://search-credoreference-com.ezproxy.capilanou.ca/content/entry/columency/aldus_manutius/0
https://typedecon.com/blogs/type-glossary/italics/