 <p>You can do this easily in XeLaTeX:</p> <pre><code>\usepackage{fontspec} ... \fontspec[ItalicFont=*,ItalicFeatures=FakeSlant]{Minion Pro} </code></pre> <p>Highly undesirable, however, if there's any chance you can get a <a href="http://www.fonts.com/findfonts/detail.htm?pid=414411" rel="nofollow noreferrer">real italic</a>.</p> <p>Update: why undesirable? Because font outlines are not designed to be distorted! Any sort of transformation besides linear scaling in both directions will change the relationship between the inner/outer curves of the letters, effectively going against the wishes of the font designer.</p> <p>If you want to highlight something in a different font than the roman and not use italic, try something completely different like a harmonising sans serif, for example.</p>