Italic and bold greyed out

[leilasbookcorner]

Hello, can anyone help me figure out why the italics and bold is greyed out in my tool bar? I cannot make my words italics or bold. Thank you for any help. 

[MikeW]

Welcome to the forum. 

The only time I've seen what you are describing is when a particular typeface doesn't have a bold or italic member in the font family. 

[firstdefence]

...and here is an example of MikeW observation, a musical notation font with no italic and no bold.

[GarryP]

To try and add to the advice above…

Some software – such as word processors – give you the option to make a bold or italic version of any text but they can sometimes do this by manipulating the characters (glyphs) in the font by either giving the text an outline stroke (bold) or skewing the text at an angle (italic) or manipulating the vectors that make up the characters in some other way. This can sometimes be useful if you do not have bold or italic versions of the font installed on your machine but these manipulations can often not look as good as if someone manually created ‘proper’ bold and/or italic variants of the font.

See my attached image where I show how properly constructed bold and italic variants of Times New Roman look much better than skewed and stroked versions of the Regular font. In particular, look at:
* how the “w” is drawn very differently in the Italic variant;
* how the “a” looks like a different font in the Italic variant;
* how the dots over the “i” and “j” don’t look ‘right’ in the Skewed version;
* how the “w” is drawn differently in the Stroked version when compared to the Bold variant.

Because of these sorts of problems, the Affinity applications do not create bold/italic versions of your fonts ‘on-the-fly’ and will only let you use the variants of the fonts that are installed on your machine (or made available to you to use in some other way). This means that you have much more of a chance that your text will look good.

You can look in the Resources section of this site for lists of many websites where you can find fonts with bold and italic variants which may be useful.

[leilasbookcorner]

16 hours ago, MikeW said:

Welcome to the forum. 

The only time I've seen what you are describing is when a particular typeface doesn't have a bold or italic member in the font family. 

Hi, thank you for responding. I am using Adobe Carlson Pro, a pretty common font. The italics and bold won't work for any fonts actually. I am stumped. Any other thoughts? Thank you again.

[leilasbookcorner]

14 hours ago, firstdefence said:

...and here is an example of MikeW observation, a musical notation font with no italic and no bold.

Thank you for responding. The problem is that it won't do italics or bold for any font. It's constantly greyed out. I am stumped. 

[leilasbookcorner]

12 hours ago, GarryP said:

To try and add to the advice above…

Some software – such as word processors – give you the option to make a bold or italic version of any text but they can sometimes do this by manipulating the characters (glyphs) in the font by either giving the text an outline stroke (bold) or skewing the text at an angle (italic) or manipulating the vectors that make up the characters in some other way. This can sometimes be useful if you do not have bold or italic versions of the font installed on your machine but these manipulations can often not look as good as if someone manually created ‘proper’ bold and/or italic variants of the font.

See my attached image where I show how properly constructed bold and italic variants of Times New Roman look much better than skewed and stroked versions of the Regular font. In particular, look at:
* how the “w” is drawn very differently in the Italic variant;
* how the “a” looks like a different font in the Italic variant;
* how the dots over the “i” and “j” don’t look ‘right’ in the Skewed version;
* how the “w” is drawn differently in the Stroked version when compared to the Bold variant.

Because of these sorts of problems, the Affinity applications do not create bold/italic versions of your fonts ‘on-the-fly’ and will only let you use the variants of the fonts that are installed on your machine (or made available to you to use in some other way). This means that you have much more of a chance that your text will look good.

You can look in the Resources section of this site for lists of many websites where you can find fonts with bold and italic variants which may be useful.

Thank you so much for taking the time to explain. I just switched from Word to Affinity and am not sure this is the problem though. In Word, all these common fonts are easily made to italics or bold with one click. I imported my Word doc to Affinity to complete it and now am wondering if somehow Affinity doesn't recognize my file, and so is stuck. I just don't know and feel helpless. Thank you for trying to help . 

[firstdefence]

Which affinity app are you using?

[leilasbookcorner]

I am using Affinity Publisher. I just tried opening a new document and the italics and bold work in the new document for all my fonts, but not in the document I imported from Word. Gosh, I would hate to have to start my book over

[firstdefence]

I wonder if you don’t have a style set that is restricting the fonts?

[leilasbookcorner]

The only font I create a style for is Andika  (body).... the other problem is that when I imported my Word document Affinity won't give me the usual style options. It's rather upsetting. I feel like I am going to have to start from scratch, or go back to Word. 

[firstdefence]

It’s hard to know without having a sample. You could duplicate/make a copy the afpub document you are having issues with and in the duplicate/copy remove most of the pages and just leave a few then upload that to see if we can see first hand what the issue is and to see if the behaviour replicates on our systems.

 

[leilasbookcorner]

I could try that. But I just tried something you suggested earlier. You said maybe the style I created was causing the problem. So I deleted the body style I created (which now made a mess), but now the italics and bold are showing. But only for that text frame. On the other text frame for another style I created, it won't show either unless I delete the style. Does that give us any more clues what could be happening. I suppose I could write it without any styles... not the best, but might work. Thoughts?

[leilasbookcorner]

Okay, now I tried deleting my text box and opened a new text box. If I retype my text it shows the italics and bold... 

I don't want to have to retype my whole document. There must be an easy fix right in front of my eyes, I am just not seeing it. 

[Alfred]

26 minutes ago, leilasbookcorner said:

I am using Adobe Carlson Pro, a pretty common font.

<pedantry>

I’m pretty sure you mean Adobe Caslon Pro. William Caslon was a (hugely influential) 18th-century English type founder.

</pedantry>

[firstdefence]

What about creating a new text box and copy/pasting content from the older text box?

 

 

[leilasbookcorner]

Good news! If I copy all my text into my notepad to remove the formatting from Word, then copy and paste it back into affinity, the italics and bold work! Now I still have to figure out why styles don't work.

[leilasbookcorner]

1 minute ago, Alfred said:

<pedantry>

I’m pretty sure you mean Adobe Caslon Pro. William Caslon was a (hugely influential) 18th-century English type founder.

</pedantry>

Yes, thank you for correcting me. I was typing fast....

[leilasbookcorner]

2 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

What about creating a new text box and copy/pasting content from the older text box

 

I tried that but it didn't work. But it does work if I first remove all the formatting by copying it onto my desktop notepad. I suppose I can do that. Thank you so much for sticking with me! Any idea why my styles aren't working though?

[walt.farrell]

32 minutes ago, leilasbookcorner said:

Any idea why my styles aren't working though?

As suggested earlier, please provide a sample .afpub document that has the problem.

[rchaisse]

I have had this same problem with Affinity Photo.

Here's my work around:

Open a 'new' and select a document under the 'Print' heading.

Here, everything works the way it's suppose to.

If you create your Text here, you can Bold,, Italicize, whatever.

Copy the and paste into your project.  You will now see that the Bold and Italics is not grayed out.

Here's an interesting  fact:

When I created another text into my project, the bold and Italics were present. and, I could control the action.

When I changed to another Font, the Bold & Italics were now grayed out.

If I scrolled the Fonts, any that were italics, showed as being Italics.   However, the B & I were still grayed out so I had no control over them.

I went back to the text I pasted into my project and the B & I were back and I had control.

When I went back to my newly created text, I re-selected the font I used when I created it, and the B & I were back and I had  control.

Affinity Engineers:  I hope you're reading this.  This problem is fixable!  please update for us.. 

Edited September 7, 2021 by rchaisse
typos

[Old Bruce]

12 hours ago, rchaisse said:

When I changed to another Font, the Bold & Italics were now grayed out.

 

Some fonts do not have Bold and/or Italic versions. The Affinity applications will not 'fake' bold or italic styles on fonts.

[rchaisse]

Thank you for that information.  I did know that.

I was referring to the fonts that normally have the bold and italics option.

[kenmcd]

2 hours ago, rchaisse said:

Thank you for that information.  I did know that.

I was referring to the fonts that normally have the bold and italics option.

Also depends on the fonts being properly configured.
What fonts were you were testing with?
And what Operating system?
If you are on a Mac, some of the Apple supplied fonts are purposely broken so the Bold and Italic buttons may not work properly.

[Andy05]

5 hours ago, rchaisse said:

Thank you for that information.  I did know that.

I was referring to the fonts that normally have the bold and italics option.

Like @LibreTraining asked, it might be interesting which fonts cause issues. As just because other apps and programs provide bold and italic variants for them, those might be fake. IIRC Word (at least when I used it ages ago) just added an outline or skewed a font in order to provide a "bold" and "italic" variant of a font even if the font doesn't naturally provide either. 

(Which always has been a nightmare for any font designer, as there's much more to create a bold and/or italic variant than just adding an outline or skew.)