Blackletter

Handwriting script

Black letter is a popular synonym for the Gothic Textualis or Textura family book hands originally developed from Protogothic from the end of the 12th century, characterised 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', as in basket-work. It thus comes to mean 'fit together intricately in a regular pattern'. The treatment of minims is the determining feature in a descending hierarchy of four grades of textualis used to palaeographers and codicologists in diplomatics:

1. Prescissa – meaning 'cut off', also known as Sine Pedibus, referring to the way in which the minims and some taller letters such as tall s and f lack 'feet': instead of ending with a serif, they are cut off in a neat horizontal at the base-line.
2. quadrata – meaning 'square', also known as Fracta.
3. Semi-Quadrata
4. Rotunda – meaning 'round'.

Carolingian minuscule was the ultimate ancestor of Textualis/Blackletter via Protogothic. 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, for which earlier scripts typically had been used.

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. The scripts were used in a secular production context in which clerics often participated and the monastic scriptorium alike.

Blackletter typesetting

Textualis, also known as textura or "Gothic book hand", was the most calligraphic form of blackletter, and today is the form most associated with "Gothic". Johannes Gutenberg carved a textualis typeface—including a large number of ligatures and common abbreviations—when he printed his 42-line Bible. However, textualis was rarely used for typefaces after this.

While an antiqua typeface is usually a compound of roman types and italic types since the 16th-century French typographers, the blackletter typefaces never developed a similar distinction. Instead, they use letterspacing (German Sperrung) for emphasis. When blackletter is letterspaced, ligatures like ⟨ch⟩, ⟨ck⟩, ⟨tz⟩ or ⟨ſt⟩ remain together without additional letterspacing (⟨ſt⟩ is dissolved, though).

The use of bold text for emphasis is also alien to blackletter typefaces.

Words from other languages, especially from Romance languages, including Latin, are usually typeset in antiqua instead of blackletter. The practice of setting foreign words or phrases in antiqua within a blackletter text does not apply to loanwords that have been incorporated into the language.

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, such as ballads, chivalric romances, and jokebooks.

Chaucer's works had been printed in blackletter in the late 15th century, but were subsequently more usually printed in Roman type. Horace Walpole wrote in 1781 that "I am too, though a Goth, so modern a Goth that I hate the black letter, and I love Chaucer better in Dryden and Baskerville than in his own language and dress."

Schwabacher typefaces dominated in Germany from about 1480 to 1530, and the style continued in use occasionally until the 20th century. Most importantly, all of the works of Martin Luther, leading to the Protestant Reformation, as well as the Apocalypse of Albrecht Dürer (1498), used this typeface. Johann Bämler, a printer from Augsburg, probably first used it as early as 1472. The origins of the name remain unclear; some assume that a typeface-carver from the village of Schwabach—one who worked externally and who thus became known as the Schwabacher—designed the typeface.

Johann Gutenberg used a textualis typeface for his famous Gutenberg Bible in 1455. Schwabacher, a blackletter with more rounded letters, soon became the usual printed typeface, but it was replaced by Fraktur in the early 17th century.

Forms

Schwabacher

Schwabacher was a blackletter form that was much used in early German print typefaces. It continued to be used occasionally until the 20th century. Characteristics of Schwabacher are:

• The small letter ⟨o⟩ is rounded on both sides, though at the top and at the bottom, the two strokes join in an angle. Other small letters have analogous forms.
• The small letter ⟨g⟩ has a horizontal stroke at its top that forms crosses with the two downward strokes.
• The capital letter ⟨H⟩ has a peculiar form somewhat reminiscent of the small letter ⟨h⟩.

Fraktur

Fraktur is a form of blackletter that became the most common German blackletter typeface by the mid-16th century. Its use was so common that often any blackletter form is called Fraktur in Germany. Characteristics of Fraktur are:

• The left side of the small letter ⟨o⟩ is formed by an angular stroke, the right side by a rounded stroke. At the top and at the bottom, both strokes join in an angle. Other small letters have analogous forms.
• The capital letters are compound of rounded ⟨c⟩-shaped or ⟨s⟩-shaped strokes.

Textura

The earliest style of blackletter. The first version used in type was based on the Donatus-Kalender (also known as Donatus-und-Kalender or D-K) bookhand, used by Gutenberg in his earliest surviving printed works, dating from the early 1450s. The name is taken from two works: the Ars grammatica of Aelius Donatus, a Latin grammar, and the Kalender (calendar).

Modern use

Among the modern uses of blackletter typefaces are some newspaper logos and nameplates, such as those of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Sydney Morning Herald, which are written with them in a style choice that "lends gravitas to the publication" by evoking the origins of typesetting and the printing press, as blackletter was the typeset with which Johannes Gutenberg printed the Gutenberg Bible.

Unicode

Mathematical blackletter characters are separately encoded in Unicode in the Mathematical alphanumeric symbols range at U+1D504-1D537 and U+1D56C-1D59F (bold), except for individual letters already encoded in the Letterlike Symbols range (plus long s at U+017F). Fonts supporting the range include Code2001, Cambria Math, Noto Sans Math, and Quivira (textura style).

This block of characters is intended for use in setting mathematical texts, which contrast blackletter characters with other letter styles. Outside of mathematics, the character set has seen some limited decorative use, but it lacks punctuation and other characters necessary for running text, and the Unicode standard for setting non-mathematical material in blackletter is to use ordinary Latin code points with a dedicated blackletter font.

Note: (The above may not render fully in all web browsers.)