, then one of the city's most prolific printers. The red chapter initials were handwritten by a
rubricator after printing.
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 , , or remain together without additional letterspacing ( 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 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 has a horizontal stroke at its top that forms crosses with the two downward strokes. • The capital letter has a peculiar form somewhat reminiscent of the small letter .
Fraktur lettering. The text similarly reads: ("
Walbaum Fraktur: Victor chases twelve boxers across the Sylt dike.")''
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 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 -shaped or -shaped strokes. Here is the entire alphabet in Fraktur (minus the
long s and the
sharp s), using the
AMS Euler Fraktur typeface: : \mathfrak{A} \mathfrak{B} \mathfrak{C} \mathfrak{D} \mathfrak{E} \mathfrak{F} \mathfrak{G} \mathfrak{H} \mathfrak{I} \mathfrak{J} \mathfrak{K} \mathfrak{L} \mathfrak{M} \mathfrak{N} \mathfrak{O} \mathfrak{P} \mathfrak{Q} \mathfrak{R} \mathfrak{S} \mathfrak{T} \mathfrak{U} \mathfrak{V} \mathfrak{W} \mathfrak{X} \mathfrak{Y} \mathfrak{Z}
Donatus-Kalender The
Donatus-Kalender (also known as Donatus-und-Kalender or D-K) is the name for the metal type design that
Gutenberg used 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). It is a form of textura. == Modern use ==