Is There A Difference Between Italic VS Just Slanting The Font?

[player]

With some fonts it is obvious there is a difference, but with a sans block style font is it pretty much the same thing?

 

[Fred Weiss]

As you said, italic is obviously different with serif styles. Most sans serif styles are more appropriately termed "oblique". The differences are much less obvious and are more relegated to optical adjustment to eliminate certain distortions that happen when a roman version (vertical version) is slanted.

 

[signcrafters london]

Fred is right. But even in a sans font like Myriad, italic has a different versions of letters, in this example is the "a" and "e."

 

[shoresigns]

For one, slanting a font will change the relative thickness of the horizontal vs. vertical strokes. That's one of the optical corrections that Fred mentioned needs to be done, even in a plain sans-serif font.

As a general rule, DON'T slant a font yourself if you can avoid it. Pick a font that has italic/oblique versions available.