Italics/bold bug

That's very strange. Which way do you choose Italics? With keyboard short cut, from the font palette or the toolbar or anywhere else?

When the text changes from italics to straight, are you sure it does not also change font? If, for some reason, the font is changed to a font without Italic typeface (like Hiragino), the Italics would be wiped out. But how could the font change?

I am able to replicate this issue. If you don't type a space after the word, then hit Cmd-i or b to turn off italics or bold, the word reverts to roman. Type a space, thought, and the word remains italic or bold. Bug? Perhaps. Or maybe … nope, not a Cocoa editor problem, definitely a Pages problem. It affects underscore, too, but if you type a space after turning off underscore, you will not that the space is still underscored. Hence whatever you type after turning off bold or italic will be bold or italic.

I suggest you report this via the Pages feedback page. And type a space before turning off the character style.

This is not a bug, it's a normal way that word processors behave. I'm able to replicate the same issue with MS Word. The problem is, when we place the cursor right before a word (no space), press Cmd–I and start typing, Pages acknowledge that we want to italicise the word that we're currently typing on it. But after the new word, we press Cmd–I again without adding a space to it, Pages will think that we want to de-italicise the current word, hence the 'changes back to roman' – but the italic option is still turned on (if you notice on the Format Bar). So if we add a space now, and start typing again, the next word will be italicise (again).

Hope this clarifies. If we want to add something in the middle of two words, it should be a habitual practice to place the cursor at the end of the first word, add a space and start typing; and not placing the cursor at the beginning of the second word.

Because you can replicate odd behaviour in Word hardly proves it isn't a bug. Besides, I cannot. In Word 2004, if I place the cursor immediately to the left of a word, hit Italic, and start typing, the word is italicized, and stays italicized when I turn italics off. No space required. This behaviour cannot be produced in Scrivener, Mail, or TextEdit, which are the only other Cocoa-based text editors I have right now. It's definitely a bug in Pages. Certainly not a very serious one, but a bug nonetheless.