The font is Times, which I use because it is perhaps the most common serif font face. It is size 16 because smaller sizes become too difficult to read on a 27" screen. I don't know what you mean by "inline", but the lines are in a text cell, that is, a cell created by selecting "Plain text" from the little dropdown menu tab on the left side which displays after placing the cursor between cells. The mix of italics and roman characters is unintentional. I think the italics creep in when one creates the superscripts. I usually go through afterwards and convert the italics to roman where necessary.
I just deleted all of the notebook cells prior to and following the example and was unable to reproduce the error on the very same text in my example. I conclude that something about the context created the problem, but I have no idea what. The notebook has only three cells, and is less than two pages in length. This was the second cell in the notebook. The text that I deleted was similar to that shown. I still see the abrupt scroll back when I enter a superscript frame. This in itself is very distracting.
I'm sure it will be useful at times to be able to enter formulas with TeX syntax, but isn't that a step backwards? One of the great advantages of Mathematica is the ability to quickly and fairly naturally enter math symbols in Plain text cells and intersperse them with input cells.
I will try switching to the default font. One loses a bit of legibility, but perhaps I have been asking too much of what is first and foremost a math program.
