A Cure For the Italics Blues?

As those who watch me or read my stories may recall, my entries of 'The Human Fish' have had problems with whole parts of the chapters coming out italicized when I did not want them to. Although I lack the technical expertise to know for sure, I now suspect the problem is at dA's end. I use notepad on Windows, as everything I type there stays as I intended, though with no hint as to how a submission will come out when posted.

My earlier efforts to eliminate unwanted italics have met with mixed results, but recently I tried editing 'The Human Fish 3' fav.me/d8z9yzk  by substituting ~text~ for <text> when a character speaks using sign language. To my relief it actually worked - all the unwanted italics disappeared, so I anticipate using ~~ instead of <> in the future. I may also revisit my earlier submissions that have had italics issues as well.