Germany continued to use Blackletters until the early twentieth century.

For these reasons, in the 1500’s, blackletter became less popular for printing in many countries except Germany and the German speaking countries. Blackletters are difficult to read as body text and Roman and Italic faces were easier to print with movable type. While Gutenberg used blackletters for his bible and books, this signaled a new era in typefaces used for printing. Image Credit: Wikipedia (with small change by the author) It’s beyond the scope of this article to go into each one, but if you look at the letter “o” in the chart below you will see the difference. Over time a wide variety of different blackletters appeared, but four major families can be identified: Textura, Rotunda, Schwabacher and Fraktur. They evolved in Western Europe from the mid twelfth century. Blackletter typefaces are based on early manuscript lettering. This style of typeface is recognizable by its dramatic thin and thick strokes, and in some fonts, the elaborate swirls on the serifs. The Blackletter typeface (also sometimes referred to as Gothic, Fraktur or Old English) was used in the Guthenburg Bible, one of the first books printed in Europe.

Old english font for the letter o