I'm writing a book with ships in it. It's not uncommon for a quote to begin with the name of a ship, which I will attempt to italicize, but then to continue with normal speech, which ought not to be italicized. Consider the following paragraph:

*"Shipname* is in port for the next week."

This always fails. I get a pair of asterisks in the output and no italics. I don't have this problem without the unbalanced quotation mark, but I don't know why that is. I can't imagine why the quote would have any significance.