On this page, you’ll learn:

  • How to italicize text in AsciiDoc.

  • Where to modify your site’s italic text styling.

Text is often italicized in order to stress a word or phrase, quote a speaker, or introduce a term. Italic type slants slightly to the right, and depending on the font, may have cursive swashes and flourishes.

Italic syntax

A word or phrase is marked as italic when it is enclosed in a single set of underscores (_word_) (constrained formatting). Bounded characters are marked as italic when they’re enclosed in a set of double underscores (char__act__ers) (unconstrained formatting).

Bounded characters are characters that are:

  • directly preceded by a non-whitespace character, or

  • directly followed by a non-whitespace character.

Italic inline formatting
An italic _word_, and an italic _phrase of text_.

Italic c__hara__cter__s__ within a word.

You don’t need to use double underscores when an entire word or phrase marked as italic is directly followed by a common punctuation mark, such as ;, ", and !.


An italic word, and an italic phrase of text.

Italic characters within a word.

Mixing italic with other formatting

You can add multiple emphasis styles to italic text as long as the syntax is placed in the correct order.

Order of inline formatting syntax
`*_monospace bold italic phrase_*` & ``**__char__**``acter``**__s__**``

Monospace syntax (`) must be the outermost formatting set. Bold syntax (*) must be outside the italics formatting set. Italic syntax is always the innermost formatting set.


monospace bold italic phrase & characters

Site styles

How italic text appears on your site depends on the fonts loaded by your UI and any CSS styles applied to the <em> HTML tag. You can learn more about customizing how italic text appears in your site in the UI documentation.

Asciidoctor resources