Xslt rendering tag < I> using SharePoint webpart

A weird issue of rendering tags I incorrectly was observed while working with xslt with SharePoint 2010 ootb rss viewer webpart. The xslt sample is

Although the xslt rendered complete content into italic format. After arealising and searching on net we figured out that thsee tags when rendered as variable gave expected behavior. The charged xslt looks like Hope this helps for someone facing similar issues.