HTML Italic Tag Bug

I was trying to italicize lines of my excerpt but for some reason the tags aren't working. The Bold and Underline tags both work. I've triple checked that I'm typing everything correctly, I'm now positive that it isn't a user error. Also odd, if I leave the tags where I want them and save the excerpt, the tags don't show at all. Which, if coded incorrectly, they normally would appear as regular input.

All the same is true for the synopsis dialog box as well.

You are using the <em> tags for italics (emphasis), right? I just did so in my own excerpt and it seems to be working fine.

let's see if this works