My Mathematica (v. 10.2) insists on italicizing single characters in text cells, including title cells, section cells, etc. See the "a" in "Define a rotation..." below for an example,

I've changed the notebook stylesheet (to the Mathematica Journal stylesheet) to no avail. Selecting the cell and clearing the formatting using the Classroom Assistant palette changes nothing. I'm really stumped. How do I stop Mathematica from doing this?

My Mathematica (v. 10.2) insists on italicizing single characters in text cells, including title cells, section cells, etc. See the "a" in "Define a rotation..." below for an example,

I've changed the notebook stylesheet (to the Mathematica Journal stylesheet) to no avail. Selecting the cell and clearing the formatting using the Classroom Assistant palette changes nothing. I'm really stumped. How do I stop Mathematica from doing this?

Edit: I found that using the button on the Classroom Assistant palette to generate a text cell gives one that behaves as I want. Here’s an example:

Cell["hello", "Text"] 

But using the Alt-7 key shortcut makes a text cell like this

Cell[BoxData[ FormBox["hello", TraditionalForm]], "Text"] 

which is the kind of cell that creates the problem.

Is there a way to change the Alt-7 shortcut to insert a simple text cell, as above?