diff --git a/res/css/views/elements/_RichText.scss b/res/css/views/elements/_RichText.scss
index 0847aa7c9b..cf2c066589 100644
--- a/res/css/views/elements/_RichText.scss
+++ b/res/css/views/elements/_RichText.scss
@@ -79,11 +79,15 @@
 
 .mx_Markdown_ITALIC {
     font-style: italic;
+/*
+    // interestingly, *not* using the explicit italic font
+    // variant seems yield better results.
 
     // compensate for Nunito italics being terrible
     // https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/1726
     transform: skewX(-14deg);
     display: inline-block;
+*/
 }
 
 .mx_Markdown_CODE {
diff --git a/res/css/views/rooms/_EventTile.scss b/res/css/views/rooms/_EventTile.scss
index ee9971887e..c920d6e390 100644
--- a/res/css/views/rooms/_EventTile.scss
+++ b/res/css/views/rooms/_EventTile.scss
@@ -453,12 +453,17 @@ limitations under the License.
     display: inline ! important;
 }
 
+/*
+// actually, removing the Italic TTF provides
+// better results seemingly
+
 // compensate for Nunito italics being terrible
 // https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/1726
 .mx_EventTile_content .markdown-body em {
     transform: skewX(-14deg);
     display: inline-block;
 }
+*/
 
 /* end of overrides */
 
diff --git a/res/themes/dharma/css/_fonts.scss b/res/themes/dharma/css/_fonts.scss
index 03da10e84c..ac15847e44 100644
--- a/res/themes/dharma/css/_fonts.scss
+++ b/res/themes/dharma/css/_fonts.scss
@@ -8,7 +8,8 @@
  * Previously, they were
  * https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Nunito:400,400i,600,600i,700,700i&subset=latin-ext,vietnamese
  *
- * Nunito's italic isn't very italic so we currently fudge italic by shearing in CSS.
+ * We explicitly do not include Nunito's italic variants, as they are not italic enough
+ * and it's better to rely on the browser's built-in obliquing behaviour.
  */
 
 /* the 'src' links are relative to the bundle.css, which is in a subdirectory.