My most recent pain point with styling to get italics was the following from a commercial e-book with Dutton as the original hardcover publisher:
Code:
<style>
.cs {
font-style: italics;
}
.plain {
font-style: normal;
}
</style>
<p class="somepara cs"><span class="plain">“We </span>need <span class="plain"> you"</span></p>
Yes, any paragraph where any word should be italicized (either through <em> or <i>) got styled as "italicize the whole thing and add exceptions for non-italic text".
Talk about an nightmare for accessibility.