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ENالعربية

R054: Italic/oblique applied to Arabic text

Arabic has no italic tradition, so the browser fakes one by mechanically slanting the letters, and text meant to look emphasized reads as distorted instead; weight or color works better.

The check

Id
R054
Category
Typography
Default severity
medium

When it fires

  1. medium

    Visible text with at least 5 Arabic letters is set font-style: italic or oblique. With no Arabic italic to use, the browser slants the letters mechanically.

    Fix: Use font-weight or color for emphasis in Arabic; reset font-style to normal.

What it leaves alone

Text with fewer than 5 Arabic letters, like a Latin phrase inside Arabic copy, which can keep its italic. Up to six per page.

Broken, then fixed

before.css
em {
  font-style: italic;
}
after.css
:lang(ar) em {
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: 600;
}

Check it by hand

Select the text and run getComputedStyle($0).fontStyle in the DevTools console. italic or oblique on Arabic is the finding; <em> and <i> are italic by default.

What the report shows you

Each R054 finding carries the fields below that apply to it, so you can see why it fired without rerunning the scan.

fontStyle
The computed font-style.
sample
The text, cut to 80 characters.

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