Text questions--symbols, shear & word spacing

I am reproducing some composited titles I orginally did in Premiere Pro.

I have three issues:

1. I am trying to reproduce some text that involves a schwa symbol. If I paste it into titles, the symbol appears. But, if I do the same in the text node in Fusion I get a box--the standard error when text does not work. Same font, same text. What is the issue?

2. The font does not come with a built in italic, so I have had to go into Fusion to use the shear function. (In Premiere you can just shear text from the titles editor) Does this somehow change the text under the hood so it no longer recognized as text? I have noticed I now cannot resize the text. If I drag the sizing slider, it just moves up and down. Even setting the shear back to zero does not solve the issue. It seems I need to retype everything.

3. Is there any easy way to adjust the spacing between words?-- Not the tracking, but the words themselves--without kerning the entire thing character by character?

1. I am trying to reproduce some text that involves a schwa symbol. If I paste it into titles, the symbol appears. But, if I do the same in the text node in Fusion I get a box--the standard error when text does not work. Same font, same text. What is the issue?

As far as I understand it, in Resolve, the programming that underlies the basic 'Text' titles (and subtitles) employs some form of font fallback system to ensure that, when a specifically typed character glyph is missing from a specifically targeted font, Resolve will simply render the missing glyph using the fallback font. This is how most word processors work. Conversely, as far as I can surmise, Fusion's 'Text+' title programming does not employ any such font fallback system, hence for any given targeted font, only its explicitly defined glyphs / character set can be rendered.

2. The font does not come with a built in italic, so I have had to go into Fusion to use the shear function. (In Premiere you can just shear text from the titles editor) Does this somehow change the text under the hood so it no longer recognized as text? I have noticed I now cannot resize the text. If I drag the sizing slider, it just moves up and down. Even setting the shear back to zero does not solve the issue. It seems I need to retype everything.

I can't replicate this... or at least, perhaps I need more info. In the Edit Page, I am able to add a Text+ title to my timeline, enter the required text, and thereafter switch to the Text+ title's own 'Transform' tab and adjust the 'Shear' settings as needed (no need to go to the Fusion Page). I can switch back to the 'Text' tab and continue to adjust Size, Tracking etc without any issue.

3. Is there any easy way to adjust the spacing between words?-- Not the tracking, but the words themselves--without kerning the entire thing character by character?

In the Text+ title's 'Transform' tab, select Transform > Words and adjust the 'Spacing' control as necessary.

Thank you so much for the detailed reply. There is so much detail to learn when switching from another editor.

Re the shear problem: I tried it again this morning with a different piece of text and there was no issue. So I must have enountered either a bug or something else in my Fusion comp was causing this issue.

With the schwa: I made a workaround by exporting a PNG in Affinity Photo of the schwa and aligning it with the text. I'll have to go back at some point with your suggestions in mind and see if I can do a more elegant solution.