http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22912
--- Comment #11 from Alexey Loukianov mooroon2@mail.ru 2010-06-21 16:03:38 --- Confirming the bug to happen with wine 1.2-rc4. I had a suspicion that it might be somehow related with the CS:Source fonts rendering crash that was discussed here: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7698#c92
Most interesting comment is #101 from Stefan Dösinger about the way the game seems to be rendering the text and possible differences between FreeType and MS Windows font rendering subsystems. The crash that discussion was about had been fixed but the clipping of the italic letters might be very similar in it's cause.
Unfortunately I can barely see how to check if my proposal makes sense.