If excerpt ends during italicized string all the excerpts below are also italicized

www.mayapplepress.com
Atahualpa version: 3.7.7
WP version: 3.5.1

While I was exploring an earlier (solved) issue, I once again noticed a issue which has bothered me for a while and for which I have not found a solution.

On the front page (or a category page or a tag page), if an excerpt is cut off during an italicized section of text, all the other excerpts below it on the page are also italicized.

Example: http://mayapplepress.com/category/books/poetry/
At the time of writing the first four excerpts on this category page were OK. The fifth excerpt, for A Palette of Leaves, breaks (after 175 words - which I have set in ATO) during an <em> string. Then it gives the "Read more" section, as it should, and then goes on to the next excerpt. BUT everything below the break is picking up that unclosed <em>.

At the moment I have set ATO to not strip <em> in excerpts. I'd really like to keep it in the excerpts because that it is protocol in my industry that publication names be italicized.

I could play with the number of words in excerpts each time something breaks, but that would be tiresome and if one were to shift it each time then the break would likely just move to a different excerpt and the problem would just shift about.

Thoughts?

Tried searching "italicized" in the Excerpts forum, but got no hits.

Regards