Question: This is a beginner's question about font handling in Cocoa. I have a font family, e.g. *Verdana*, that has the following typefaces: *Regular*, *Bold*, *Italic*, and *Bold Italic*. I know those typefaces exist since they are available in the Fonts panel.

This works:

```
NSFont *regular = [NSFont fontWithName:@"Verdana" size:75];
NSFont *bold = [NSFont fontWithName:@"Verdana-Bold" size:75];
NSFont *italic = [NSFont fontWithName:@"Verdana-Italic" size:75];

```

This does not work:

```
NSFont *boldItalic = [NSFont fontWithName:@"Verdana-Bold Italic" size:75];

```

What is the simplest way to get the *Bold Italic* version of a given font family?

Answer: 
This works:

```
NSFontManager *fontManager = [NSFontManager sharedFontManager];
NSFont *boldItalic = [fontManager fontWithFamily:@"Verdana"
                                          traits:NSBoldFontMask|NSItalicFontMask
                                          weight:0
                                            size:75];

```
`Verdana-BoldItalic`.

(The actual name of the bold-italic variant of the font depends on the family, and some font doesn't have bold-italic, Use a `NSFontDescriptor` with `-fontDescriptorWithSymbolicTraits:` to get the exact bold italic font.)