>I'm not seeing that behaviour ("Speaking Experience" is in italic regardless of spacing) - what browser were you using?

It's IE.

>But, bottom line, the HTML is not valid and there is no defined behaviour for such a pattern so no 'right or wrong' browser rendering......

Yes, it is not a standard. But, it doesn't mean we can't do something about it. :)

Yes, I do recognize it is a not valid HTML. This is why I brought it up. I see many defining styles by always putting default font-style, font-weight, etc., when this is actually the default. In many situations like these, it helps to avoid the rest of div content to be affected by a tag not closed on top, for example.