[Query/Bug?] Italics in gameside motto

[Tyrinth]

In my gameside national motto kanji gets the standard motto auto-italicization but kana does not, which leads to not only it looking strange, but also some overlap between characters (which I wager could get even worse depending on what was written.)

Just wondering if this is working as intended, or something that could potentially be fixed?

I tried reentering the motto to see if that did anything, but it didn't seem to change at all.

http://i.imgur.com/pS1dhHT.png

[Trotterdam]

Does Japanese even use italics? My impression was that Japanese tends to use katakana for the same types of situations where English uses italics. Computer typesetting developed an "italics is a property that can be imposed onto any character" mentality because the standards were developed in Roman-alphabet-using countries, where italics looks good and is traditional. As such, it may be a fluke which Japanese fonts (or parts of fonts) actually support italics, explaining the discrepancy.

I would suspect that this is on your end, not something in NationStates. Have you tried testing how italics Japanese works in a word processing program? (I don't have a Japanese font at all on my computer, I can't tell you.)

It's not an issue on Antiquity, which doesn't italicize mottos.

[Tyrinth]

Does Japanese even use italics? My impression was that Japanese tends to use katakana for the same types of situations where English uses italics. Computer typesetting developed an "italics is a property that can be imposed onto any character" mentality because the standards were developed in Roman-alphabet-using countries, where italics looks good and is traditional. As such, it may be a fluke which Japanese fonts (or parts of fonts) actually support italics, explaining the discrepancy.

I would suspect that this is on your end, not something in NationStates. Have you tried testing how italics Japanese works in a word processing program? (I don't have a Japanese font at all on my computer, I can't tell you.)

It's not an issue on Antiquity, which doesn't italicize mottos.

It can be italicized, but it just doesn't in the motto.

I like the new theme, so I'd rather not be forced to switch back as a fix.

[Sandaoguo]

You don't have a font on your computer that has an italics variant for kana script, or the one you've set as the default for displaying kana script doesn't have an italics variant.

[Trotterdam]

There's certainly nothing in the HTML or CSS code that would result in only part of a motto being italicized. The entire thing is in one text chunk.

I had another look at your nation page, but you seem to have changed your motto to a shorter one than the one from your screenshot. However, both now and last time I checked, though I don't have a Japanese font, all of the I-don't-know-what-this-character-is question marks were italicized in non-Antiquity themes.

My only advice is to try different Japanese fonts in your word processor / browser settings. If you remember italics working for kana, that may have been on a different font.

For that matter, try posting the motto that's causing the trouble to the forum?

[Tyrinth]

As an update, it seems to have fixed itself. Though now absolutely nothing is italicized. Better than the half and half at least.

It's strange, because I've used Japanese in my motto for a long time and never had this issue.

I really have no idea what's going on.

Consider this resolved, I suppose.