I can only shear a single text string. I can't italicize a word inside the string, which can be annoying if I'm only trying to emphasize a point. Or am I incorrect? I hope I'm wrong... Monika, I'll try it out now!

Scott, I wish it was that easy, but there are some really distinct great fonts out there without italics. I don't want to switch from that to something such as Arial for the sake of it having italics.

Monika, sorry, but I seem to be lost. Can you elaborate more? On the appearenance panel, the only thing I can do, it seems, is add an effect, and I don't see an effect as simple as a color fill with an opacity option. Can you give me a hand?

No, I was simply giving a quick argument of what I mean. To give a prominent example, is handwriting fonts. I have scoured across the internet for good handwriting fonts, and the only ones worth looking at, for me, are the ones made by Kimberly Geswein (http://www.dafont.com/kimberly-geswein.d1468 , search "Kimberly Geswein" here http://www.google.com/webfonts/).Most of her fonts don't have italics, however. And I'd hate to resort to a worse font simply to make italicizing a bit easier. Really, I just don't know why adobe can't implement what seems to be a very easy technology. I understand that faux italics may look worse, but I'm betting many are willing to make that tradeoff. Or if not, then just not use it then.

And I was hoping I can fill all my vectors at once, but I get "mixed appearance" then. Is there a faster way to fill, than to select each individual vector shapes? I'm guessing not :-/

Paid fonts are very expensive, and I usually like to alternate. Also, I usually don't care if the font is poorly constructed as long as it looks nice. I am aware of fonts such as Archer will looks great, but they aren't the look I'm going for. Regardless, my point still stands that it would be simple to be integrate, and it's annoying that Illustrator simply won't allow that option.

Thank you for the tip! I'll integrate it into my workflow.