I am proofreading a text in which titles are underlined; when I change them so that they are in italics, the resulting
italicized words are also underlined. Is that normal? How can I have a word in italics without it being underlined as well?
When you italicize words, they become underlined or remain underlined?
I understand you are using the toolbar buttons to italicise/underline words.
Adding an attribute with buttons does not clear existing attributes. If you want to replace underline with italics, you must first clear underline.
A much better approach is to use styles. In your case, paragraph styles would do the trick.
Think of a paragraph style like a “super typographical attribute”. You mark all similar paragraphs with the same style.
Then you only need to change the style definition to immediately update all marked paragraphs.
This only sketches the surface of style power. I recommend you read the relevant chapters in the Writer Guide to have an idea of what can be done with them. Basically, you separate content (the text) from appearance (the look). Once your text is fully types and styled, i.e. marked up, you only tune the various styles to achieve your formatting. Styles include vertical and horizontal separation. Consequently, don’t space you text with empty paragraphs or non-significant tabs.
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