I hope I can phrase this clearly, and thanks in advance for any help. This is an example of a problem I’ve had for a while. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a simple solution, but I’ve yet to find it.

Say I recently bought the regular, bold, italic, and bold italic versions of a font — let’s say Scala OT for this example. I’m writing a document in Word on my work PC and using Scala Regular as my main font. If I want to italicize something, I can’t just hit Ctrl-I and type. Instead of mapping to Scala Italic, the program just slants Scala Regular to the right a bit.

So, I have to change the face to Scala Italic, type my phrase, and then change the font back to Scala Regular. This is such a pain, especially when it comes to longer documents.

Some programs (e.g., Illustrator and Photoshop) are smart enough to map the font properly on their own, but many others (e.g., Word and Fireworks) are not.

Is there any way to get around this problem? I’d love it if there was a system-wide fix for my PC (I use XP at work). But at this point, I’d settle for a program-specific workaround in Word — since that’s where I do most of my long-form writing.

Thanks for any help you can offer!