I've been trying (with mediocre results) to use the Autocorrect feature to automatically italicise words in a way that is font (and size) agnostic. In other words, I only want the Autocorrect to italicise a word, not to change font or size. I am scrupulously following these instructions:



1. Type the word I want to italicise;
2. Select the whole word;
3. Press CTRL + I to italicise;
4. Open the Autocorrect Options window (ALT + T, then A);
5. The selected word usually appears in the "replace" box;
6. Click on the "Formatted text" radio button;
7. Click OK.

This procedure only works at random, meaning that sometimes it works, sometimes it does not, and I really can't understand what I'm doing wrong. Most of the times, when I type the word (after having followed this algorithm), not only it gets italicised, but Word also changes the font and the size to match the ones I was using when I called the Autocorrect Options menu. Only on rare occasions the word gets memorised correctly, that is to say, when it is typed it is automatically italicised (and only italicised).

P. S.
I'm using Microsoft 365 under Windows 10.

I'm ashamed to admit this, but I have found the answer on my own: it only works if I'm using the default font (the one associated with the default template) when I'm inputting the word to be italicised. If I'm using any other font, the font's size and type are stored as well as the italicisation.

The key is the "default paragraph font" for the paragraph style, not for the document.

If you use a different paragraph style with a different font, you can insert italicized in the same font.

Change the paragraph style to the font, rather than using direct formatting.
See Importance of Styles in Word.

Thank you for the clarification: I will certainly look into it!