Formatting tags in variables not working

Hi everybody,

I've been working on a project full of text variables and I just came across a formatting issue. According to this update note : 

https://www.articulatesupport.com/article/Storyline-360-Using-HTML-Formatting-Tags-in-Text-Variables?redirect=false 

I should be able to use <i></i> to italicize a text variable. And I've been doing that a lot, but always from JavaScript, and right now, I was working with the default variable, I added the tag within the variable and yet it didn't work. Does it mean that formatting tags can only work when the variable is changed?

For instance, if my default value is : "Here is some <i>formatted</i> text." the word "formatted" will not be italicized and the tags will be visible.

But, if I change the value of the variable from empty to "Here is some <i>formatted</i> text." the word "formatted" will be italicized and the tags will not be visible.

Is that intended? In my case, I cannot simply use the second option, neither could I use JavaScript, as it would overcomplicate what I'm trying to do.