Blackletter
Medieval Gothic script family used in manuscripts and typefaces.
Blackletter—also called Gothic, black letter, or black-letter—began as a medieval handwriting style known as Textualis or Textura, part of the Gothic script family. It was later turned into typefaces and remains in use today for calligraphy and typesetting. Alongside Roman and Italic type, it ranks as one of the three major typefaces in Western typography’s history.
This book hand was common across Western Europe from the late 1100s through the 1600s. It kept appearing in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish texts until the 1870s, in Finnish until around 1900, in Estonian and Latvian into the 1930s, and in German until the 1940s, when a 1941 directive known as the Normalschrifterlass discouraged its use in official contexts—though blackletter continued in private and regional use. A notable blackletter style is Fraktur, and sometimes people use “Fraktur” to refer to the whole group. Despite being occasionally called Old English lettering, blackletter has nothing to do with the Old English language, which was written in insular script or Futhorc runes centuries earlier.
The term “black letter” originally described the heavy, thick typeface as opposed to the thinner “white letter” or humanistic scripts of the time. Another theory links it to mourning or bad times, since bold black writing was used for “black-letter days.” The name “Gothic” comes from the Gothic script, but blackletter should not be confused with the ancient Gothic alphabet or with sans-serif typefaces sometimes also called Gothic.
As a handwriting script, blackletter is another name for the Gothic Textualis or Textura book hands that evolved from Protogothic around the late 1100s. These scripts are narrow, tall, and square, with elaborate minims. The name Textura comes from the Latin *texo* (“to weave”), because the letters look woven together. Palaeographers sort Textualis into four grades based on how minims are treated: Prescissa (cut off flat at the baseline, also called Sine Pedibus), Quadrata (square, also Fracta), Semi-Quadrata, and Rotunda (round). Carolingian minuscule, via Protogothic, was the ultimate ancestor.
Quick Facts
- Qid
- Q148443
- Time
- 12th–17th century (as late as 20th century in Germany)
- Languages
- Western and Northern European languages
- Children
- Fraktur (Fraktur and blackletter are sometimes used interchangeably) / Kurrentschrift including Sütterlin
- Unicode
- 1D504 / – / 1D537 / , with some exceptions (see below)
Facts from the source article.
Lore & Background
Blackletter developed from Protogothic from the end of the 12th century, characterized by lateral compression resulting in narrow, tall letter forms, square aspects and more elaborate treatment of minims. The scripts became known as Textura or Textualis because of their 'woven' look: the Latin verb texo means 'to weave' or 'plait'. An increasingly literate 12th-century Europe required new books in many different subjects; new universities were founded, each producing books for business, law, grammar, history and other pursuits, not solely religious works. The Gothic Textualis system provided distinct categories of script suited for use in a well perceived contemporary hierarchy of books and texts, from de luxe liturgical volumes to university textbooks.
Reader's Guide
Blackletter served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography, alongside Italic type and Roman type. Johannes Gutenberg carved a textualis typeface—including a large number of ligatures and common abbreviations—when he printed his 42-line Bible. Printers of the late 15th and early 16th centuries commonly used blackletter typefaces, but under the influence of Renaissance tastes, Roman typefaces grew in popularity, until by about 1590 most presses had converted to them. However, blackletter was considered to be more readily legible (especially by the less literate classes of society), and it therefore remained in use throughout the 17th century and into the 18th for documents intended for widespread dissemination, such as proclamations and Acts of Parliament, and for literature aimed at the common people. Schwabacher typefaces dominated in Germany from about 1480 to 1530, and Fraktur became the most common German blackletter typeface by the mid-16th century. Blackletter continued to be commonly used for Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish until the 1870s, Finnish until the turn of the 20th century, Estonian and Latvian until the 1930s, and for the German language until the 1940s, when Adolf Hitler officially banned it in 1941.
Did You Know?
- Blackletter is not to be confused with the Old English language, which predates blackletter by many centuries and was written in the insular script or in Futhorc runes.
- The term 'black letter' was used as a descriptive term to distinguish the heavy, thick typeface from the thinner 'white letter' or humanistic scripts.
- Johannes Gutenberg carved a textualis typeface for his 42-line Bible.
- Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes the entire group of blackletter faces is referred to as Fraktur.
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