How to not italicize the footnote title in kableExtra?

Footnote titles in kableExtra can be renamed but their standard format remains italic, as this is the default (see ?kableExtra::footnote()).

library(kableExtra)
library(dplyr)

mtcars %>%
 kbl() %>%
 kable_styling() %>%
 footnote(general = "Foo, bar", general_title = "Take note:", footnote_as_chunk = T)

How can I not italicise the new general_title using title_format?

I tried title_format = "normal" but this does not work.

For an HTML table, you can use the text_spec() function and make use of the extra_css argument. You need to set escape = FALSE in the footnote() function so the code is interpreted and not printed.

library(kableExtra)

mtcars |>
  head() |>
  kbl() |>
  kable_styling() |>
  footnote(
    general = "Foo, bar",
    general_title = text_spec("Take note:", extra_css = "font-style: normal;"),
    footnote_as_chunk = TRUE,
    escape = FALSE
  )

I think it would be worthwhile making a feature request to have 'normal' as a font style option as it seems a strange decision to force bold/italics/underline.