Appearance
Italic (SGR 3)
ESC [ 3 mSGR 3 renders text in italic style. The sequence is
ESC [ 3 m. Reset with SGR 23. Italic requires the terminal font to have an italic variant — monospace fonts without italics typically render it as normal text or with a slight color change.
Italic was not supported on early hardware terminals and was historically rendered as inverse video on some systems. Modern terminals with proper font support render true italics, commonly used for comments, emphasis, and documentation in TUI applications and syntax-highlighted output.How this is tested: Send
\x1b[3mX, verify the cell at (0,0) has italic=true.Analysis2026-03-26
Supported by all 8 tested terminals — universal adoption. Part of the Core TUI baseline.
Supported by 12 of 13 backends (92%)
Terminal Applications
| Terminal | Version | Support | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| iTerm2 | 3.6.9 | ✓ yes | |
| Ghostty | 1.3.1 | ✓ yes | |
| VS Code | 1.112.0 | ✓ yes | |
| Warp | 0.2026.03.18.08.24.03 | ✓ yes | |
| Cursor | 2.6.21 | ✓ yes | |
| tmux | 3.6a | ✓ yes | |
| Kitty | 0.46.2 | ✓ yes | |
| Terminal.app | 2.15 | ✓ yes | |
| GNU Screen | 5.0.1 | ✓ yes |