Thank you, Stefan. Yesterday I tried something that seems to be an answer for what I'm trying to do.

I built a template with the font and paragraph formatting desired in the final document with Lorem Ipsum "dummy" text. Then a copied text from another document with different formatting (and that had some italics directly applied), selected the dummy text, and pasted the new text in its place.

At the end of the last paragraph of the new text, the "Paste Options" dialogue box appeared and gave me the opportunity to "Match destination formatting." That applied the formatting from the dummy text to the new text and left the italics, even whole paragraphs.

I had never seen this box before and didn't know I could do that. I also found that Word > Preferences > Edit > Cut and paste options > Show Paste Options buttons is what allows the dialogue box to appear.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond to my question.