Gothic Script

black letter

 or Gothic script or Old English script

Black letter, type as used in the 42-line Bible issued at Mainz, 1456.

(credit: EB Inc.)

Style of alphabet used in handwriting throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. It features uniform vertical strokes that end on the baseline, angular lines instead of smooth curves and circles, and the overlapping of convex forms. Black letter and roman were the dominant letter shapes of medieval typography. The only extant work known to have been printed by Johannes Gutenberg, the 42-line Bible (1450s), was set in black-letter type. Roman type largely superseded it in the Renaissance, though black letter persisted in Germany well into the 20th century. Today black letter is often used for diplomas, Christmas cards, and liturgical writings.

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Gothic Script 

(also called Gothic minuscule), handwriting in Latin script in the medieval period (12th to 15th centuries). It replaced the formerly used handwriting, Caroline minuscule. The first examples of Gothic script occurred in Italy in the tenth century and in other countries of Western and Central Europe at the end of the 11th century. The predominance of Gothic script in books began to be noted in the 12th century in Germany, France, and other countries using Latin.

Four types of Gothic script are distinguished: (1) Textura, angular script; (2) Fraktur, angular script with broken outlines: (3) Schwabacher, broken script with rounded outlines of some letters; and (4) Round Gothic, a type that is transitional between Gothic and the humanist script of the Renaissance (an imitation of Roman monumental inscriptions). In Germany, Gothic script has been used along with Antiqua, the Roman printing characters. In contemporary German publications, especially in the German Democratic Republic, the use of Gothic script is limited.

REFERENCES

Dobiash-Rozhdestvenskaia. O. A. Istoriia pis’ma ν srednie veka [2nd ed.] Moscow-Leningrad. 1936.
Steffens, F. Lateinische Pal ä aographie 2nd ed. Berlin-Leipzig, 1929.