>>I'm not seeing that behaviour ("Speaking Experience" is in italic regardless of spacing) - what browser were you using?
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>It's IE.
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>>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......
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>Yes, it is not a standard. But, it doesn't mean we can't do something about it. :)
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>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.

And I remember that at least fifty times (over the years) I had to update the message just because I used an I or B tag and then had a typo in the closing tag, which made the rest of the message (even across PRE tags), including signature, italic (or bold). So at least Firefox will keep it italic over many other tags.