![Gebrochene Schriften](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Gebrochene_Schriften.png)
Fraktur () is a
calligraphic hand
Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "t ...
of the
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
and any of several
blackletter
Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...
typeface
A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
There are list of type ...
s derived from this hand. The blackletter lines are broken up; that is, their forms contain many angles when compared to the curves of the
Antiqua (common) typefaces modeled after antique
Roman square capitals
Roman square capitals, also called ''capitalis monumentalis'', inscriptional capitals, elegant capitals and ''capitalis quadrata'', are an ancient Roman form of writing, and the basis for modern capital letters. Square capitals are characterize ...
and
Carolingian minuscule
Carolingian minuscule or Caroline minuscule is a script which developed as a calligraphic standard in the medieval European period so that the Latin alphabet of Jerome's Vulgate Bible could be easily recognized by the literate class from one reg ...
. From this, Fraktur is sometimes contrasted with the "Latin alphabet" in northern European texts, which is sometimes called the "German alphabet", simply being a
typeface
A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
There are list of type ...
of the
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
. Similarly, the term "Fraktur" or "Gothic" is sometimes applied to ''all'' of the blackletter typefaces (known in
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
as , "Broken Script").
The word derives from Latin ("a break"), built from , passive participle of ("to break"), the same root as the English word "fracture".
Characteristics
Besides the 26 letters of the
ISO basic Latin alphabet
The ISO basic Latin alphabet is an international standard (beginning with ISO/IEC 646) for a Latin-script alphabet that consists of two sets (uppercase and lowercase) of 26 letters, codified in various national and international standards and u ...
, Fraktur includes the ( ), vowels with
umlauts, and the (''
long s
The long s , also known as the medial s or initial s, is an archaism, archaic form of the lowercase letter . It replaced the single ''s'', or one or both of the letters ''s'' in a 'double ''s sequence (e.g., "ſinfulneſs" for "sinfulness" ...
''). Some Fraktur typefaces also include a variant form of the letter r known as the
r rotunda
The r rotunda ⟨ ꝛ ⟩, "rounded r", is a historical calligraphic variant of the minuscule (lowercase) letter Latin '' r'' used in full script-like typefaces, especially blackletters.
Unlike other letter variants such as "long s" which or ...
, and many include a variety of
ligature
Ligature may refer to:
* Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure
** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry
* Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
s which are left over from cursive handwriting and have rules for their use. Most older Fraktur typefaces make no distinction between the
majuscule
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
s and (where the common shape is more suggestive of a ), even though the
minuscules and are differentiated.
One difference between the Fraktur and other blackletter scripts is that in the lower case , the left part of the bow is broken, but the right part is not. In Danish texts composed in Fraktur, the letter was already preferred to the German and Swedish in the 16th century.
In the Latvian variant of Fraktur, used mainly until the 1920s, there are additional characters used to denote Latvian letters with
diacritical marks
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacritic ...
. Stroked letters , , , , are used for palatalized consonants (, , , , ) stroked variants of and distinguish voiced and unvoiced sibilants or affricates ( for voiced
for unvoiced
/
ž/
, while accents (, , , , , ) together with digraphs (, etc.) are used for long vowels (, , , , ). Stroked variants of are also used in pre-1950 Sorbian orthography.
Origin
The first Fraktur typeface arose in the early 16th century, when Emperor
Maximilian I Maximilian I may refer to:
*Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, reigned 1486/93–1519
*Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria, reigned 1597–1651
*Maximilian I, Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (1636-1689)
*Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria, reigned 1795 ...
commissioned the design of the ''
Triumphal Arch
A triumphal arch is a free-standing monumental structure in the shape of an archway with one or more arched passageways, often designed to span a road. In its simplest form a triumphal arch consists of two massive piers connected by an arch, crow ...
'' woodcut by
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer (; ; hu, Ajtósi Adalbert; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer (without an umlaut) or Due ...
and had a new typeface created specifically for this purpose, designed by
Hieronymus Andreae
Hieronymus Andreae, or Andreä, or Hieronymus Formschneider, (died 7 May 1556) was a German woodblock cutter ("formschneider"), printer, publisher and typographer closely associated with Albrecht Dürer. Andreae's best known achievements includ ...
. Fraktur types for
printing
Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ea ...
were established by the
Augsburg
Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the ' ...
publisher
Johann Schönsperger at the issuance of a series of Maximilian's works such as his ''Prayer Book'' (, 1513) or the illustrated ''
Theuerdank
''Theuerdank'' (''Teuerdank, Tewerdanck, Teuerdannckh'') is a poetic work composed by Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, (1486-1519) in German which tells the fictionalised and romanticised story of his journe ...
'' poem (1517).
Fraktur quickly overtook the earlier
Schwabacher
The German word Schwabacher (pronounced ) refers to a specific style of blackletter typefaces which evolved from Gothic Textualis (''Textura'') under the influence of Humanist type design in Italy during the 15th century. Schwabacher typesetti ...
and
Textualis
Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...
typefaces in popularity, and a wide variety of Fraktur fonts were carved and became common in the German-speaking world and areas under German influence (Scandinavia, Estonia, Latvia,
Central Europe
Central Europe is an area of Europe between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, based on a common historical, social and cultural identity. The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) between Catholicism and Protestantism significantly shaped the area' ...
). In the 18th century, the German
Theuerdank Fraktur
''Theuerdank'' (''Teuerdank, Tewerdanck, Teuerdannckh'') is a poetic work composed by Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, (1486-1519) in German which tells the fictionalised and romanticised story of his journe ...
was further developed by the
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
typographer
Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf
Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf (Leipzig, 23 November 1719 – 28 January 1794, Leipzig) was a German music publisher and typographer.
Biography
Breitkopf was the son of the publisher Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf, founder of the publishing hous ...
to create the typeset
Breitkopf Fraktur
Breitkopf Fraktur is a Blackletter font designed by typographer and German music publisher Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf (1719–1794). Breitkopf was the son of the publisher Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf, founder of the publishing house Brei ...
. While over the succeeding centuries, most Central Europeans switched to Antiqua, German speakers remained a notable holdout.
Use
![Scripts in Europe (1901)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Scripts_in_Europe_%281901%29.jpg)
Typesetting in Fraktur was still very common in the early 20th century in all
German-speaking
German ( ) is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a ...
countries and areas, as well as in
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
,
Estonia
Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...
, and
Latvia
Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...
, and was still used to a very small extent in
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
,
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
and
Denmark
)
, song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast")
, song_type = National and royal anthem
, image_map = EU-Denmark.svg
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark
...
, even though other countries typeset in
Antiqua. Some books at that time used related blackletter fonts such as
Schwabacher
The German word Schwabacher (pronounced ) refers to a specific style of blackletter typefaces which evolved from Gothic Textualis (''Textura'') under the influence of Humanist type design in Italy during the 15th century. Schwabacher typesetti ...
; however, the predominant typeface was the Normalfraktur, which came in slight variations.
From the late 18th century to the late 19th century, Fraktur was progressively replaced by
Antiqua as a symbol of the classicist age and emerging cosmopolitanism in most of the countries in Europe that had previously used Fraktur. This move was hotly debated in Germany, where it was known as the
Antiqua–Fraktur dispute
The Antiqua–Fraktur dispute was a typography, typographical dispute in 19th- and early 20th-century Germany.
In most European countries, blackletter typefaces like the German Fraktur were displaced with the creation of the Antiqua (typeface ...
. The shift affected mostly scientific writing in Germany, whereas most
belletristic
is a category of writing, originally meaning beautiful or fine writing. In the modern narrow sense, it is a label for literary works that do not fall into the major categories such as fiction, poetry, or drama. The phrase is sometimes used pejora ...
literature and newspapers continued to be printed in Fraktur.
The Fraktur typefaces remained in use in
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, when they were initially represented as true German script; official Nazi documents and letterheads employed the font, and the cover of
Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then ...
's used a hand-drawn version of it. However, more modernized fonts of the type such as
Tannenberg were in fact the most popular typefaces in Nazi Germany, especially for running text as opposed to decorative uses such as in titles. These fonts were designed in the early 20th century, mainly the 1930s, as
grotesque
Since at least the 18th century (in French and German as well as English), grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, mysterious, magnificent, fantastic, hideous, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus ...
versions of blackletter typefaces. The Nazis heavily used these fonts themselves, though the shift remained controversial; in fact, the press was at times scolded for its frequent use of "Roman characters" under "Jewish influence" and German émigrés were urged to use only "German script". On January 3, 1941, the Nazi Party ended this controversy by switching to international scripts such as Antiqua.
Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. He gained immense power by using his position as Adolf Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information ...
issued a circular to all public offices which declared Fraktur (and its corollary, the -based handwriting) to be (Jewish letters) and prohibited their further use. German historian Albert Kapr has speculated that the regime viewed Fraktur as inhibiting communication in the
occupied territories
Military occupation, also known as belligerent occupation or simply occupation, is the effective military control by a ruling power over a territory that is outside of that power's sovereign territory.Eyāl Benveniśtî. The international law ...
during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
After 1941
Even with the abolition of Fraktur, some publications include elements of it in headlines. However, academic works occasionally continued to use Fraktur in the text itself. Notably,
Joachim Jeremias
Joachim Jeremias (20 September 1900 – 6 September 1979) was a German Lutheran theologian, scholar of Near Eastern Studies and university professor for New Testament studies. He was abbot of Bursfelde, 1968–1971.
He was born in Dresden and sp ...
's work ("The Letters to Timothy and Titus") was published in 1963 using Fraktur. More often, some ligatures ch, ck from Fraktur were used in antiqua-typed editions up to the offset type period. Fraktur saw a brief resurgence after the war, but thereafter fell out of common use.
Fraktur is today used mostly for decorative typesetting: for example, a number of traditional German newspapers such as the , as well as the Norwegian , still print their name in Fraktur on the
masthead (as indeed do some newspapers in other European countries and the U.S.) and it is also popular for pub signs and the like. In this modern decorative use, the traditional rules about the use of
long s
The long s , also known as the medial s or initial s, is an archaism, archaic form of the lowercase letter . It replaced the single ''s'', or one or both of the letters ''s'' in a 'double ''s sequence (e.g., "ſinfulneſs" for "sinfulness" ...
and short s and of
ligature
Ligature may refer to:
* Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure
** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry
* Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
s are often disregarded.
Individual Fraktur letters are sometimes used in
mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
, which often denotes associated or parallel concepts by the same letter in different fonts. For example, a
Lie group
In mathematics, a Lie group (pronounced ) is a group that is also a differentiable manifold. A manifold is a space that locally resembles Euclidean space, whereas groups define the abstract concept of a binary operation along with the additio ...
is often denoted by ''G'', while its associated
Lie algebra
In mathematics, a Lie algebra (pronounced ) is a vector space \mathfrak g together with an Binary operation, operation called the Lie bracket, an Alternating multilinear map, alternating bilinear map \mathfrak g \times \mathfrak g \rightarrow ...
is
. A
ring ideal
In ring theory, a branch of abstract algebra, an ideal of a ring is a special subset of its elements. Ideals generalize certain subsets of the integers, such as the even numbers or the multiples of 3. Addition and subtraction of even numbers pre ...
might be denoted by
(or
if a prime ideal) while an element is
. The Fraktur
is also sometimes used to denote the
cardinality of the continuum
In set theory, the cardinality of the continuum is the cardinality or "size" of the set of real numbers \mathbb R, sometimes called the continuum. It is an infinite cardinal number and is denoted by \mathfrak c (lowercase fraktur "c") or , \mathb ...
, that is, the cardinality of the real line. In
model theory
In mathematical logic, model theory is the study of the relationship between formal theories (a collection of sentences in a formal language expressing statements about a mathematical structure), and their models (those structures in which the s ...
,
is used to denote an arbitrary model, with ''A'' as its universe. Fraktur is also used in other ways at the discretion of the author.
Fraktur is still used among traditional
Anabaptists
Anabaptism (from New Latin language, Neo-Latin , from the Greek language, Greek : 're-' and 'baptism', german: Täufer, earlier also )Since the middle of the 20th century, the German-speaking world no longer uses the term (translation: "Re- ...
to print German texts, while
Kurrent
() is an old form of German-language handwriting based on late medieval cursive writing, also known as ("cursive script"), ("German script") and ''German cursive''. Over the history of its use into the first part of the 20th century, many ...
is used as hand writing for German texts. Groups that use both forms of traditional German script are the
Amish
The Amish (; pdc, Amisch; german: link=no, Amische), formally the Old Order Amish, are a group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss German and Alsatian origins. They are closely related to Mennonite churches ...
,
Old Order Mennonite
Old Order Mennonites (Pennsylvania Dutch language, Pennsylvania German: ) form a branch of the Mennonite tradition. Old Order Movement, Old Order are those Mennonite groups of Swiss people, Swiss German and south Germans, German heritage who pract ...
s,
Hutterite
Hutterites (german: link=no, Hutterer), also called Hutterian Brethren (German: ), are a communal ethnoreligious group, ethnoreligious branch of Anabaptism, Anabaptists, who, like the Amish and Mennonites, trace their roots to the Radical Refor ...
s, and traditional
Plautdietsch-speaking
Mennonites
Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radic ...
who live mostly in
Latin America
Latin America or
* french: Amérique Latine, link=no
* ht, Amerik Latin, link=no
* pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...
today.
Typeface samples
![Fraktur letter A](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Fraktur_letter_A.png)
![Fraktur letter B](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Fraktur_letter_B.png)
![Fraktur letter C](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Fraktur_letter_C.png)
![Fraktur letter D](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Fraktur_letter_D.png)
![Fraktur letter E](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Fraktur_letter_E.png)
![Fraktur letter F](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Fraktur_letter_F.png)
![Fraktur letter G](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Fraktur_letter_G.png)
![Fraktur letter H](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Fraktur_letter_H.png)
![Fraktur letter I](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Fraktur_letter_I.png)
![Fraktur letter J](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Fraktur_letter_J.png)
![Fraktur letter K](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Fraktur_letter_K.png)
![Fraktur letter L](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Fraktur_letter_L.png)
![Fraktur letter M](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Fraktur_letter_M.png)
![Fraktur letter N](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Fraktur_letter_N.png)
![Fraktur letter O](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Fraktur_letter_O.png)
![Fraktur letter P](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Fraktur_letter_P.png)
![Fraktur letter Q](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Fraktur_letter_Q.png)
![Fraktur letter R](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Fraktur_letter_R.png)
![Fraktur letter S](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Fraktur_letter_S.png)
![Fraktur letter T](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Fraktur_letter_T.png)
![Fraktur letter U](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Fraktur_letter_U.png)
![Fraktur letter V](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Fraktur_letter_V.png)
![Fraktur letter W](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Fraktur_letter_W.png)
![Fraktur letter X](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Fraktur_letter_X.png)
![Fraktur letter Y](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Fraktur_letter_Y.png)
![Fraktur letter Z](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Fraktur_letter_Z.png)
![Fraktur letter A-umlaut](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Fraktur_letter_A-umlaut.png)
![Fraktur letter O-umlaut](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Fraktur_letter_O-umlaut.png)
![Fraktur letter U-umlaut](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Fraktur_letter_U-umlaut.png)
![Fraktur letter Eszett](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Fraktur_letter_Eszett.png)
![Fraktur ligature CH](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Fraktur_ligature_CH.png)
![Fraktur ligature CK](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Fraktur_ligature_CK.png)
![Fraktur ligature TZ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Fraktur_ligature_TZ.png)
In the figures below, the German sentence that appears after the names of the fonts (Walbaum-Fraktur in Fig. 1 and Humboldtfraktur in Fig. 2 reads, . It means "Victor chases twelve boxers across the
Sylt
Sylt (; da, Sild; Sylt North Frisian, Söl'ring North Frisian: ) is an island in northern Germany, part of Nordfriesland district, Schleswig-Holstein, and well known for the distinctive shape of its shoreline. It belongs to the North Frisian ...
dike" and contains all 26 letters of the alphabet plus the
umlauted glyphs used in German, making it an example of a
pangram
A pangram or holoalphabetic sentence is a sentence using every letter of a given alphabet at least once. Pangrams have been used to display typefaces, test equipment, and develop skills in handwriting, calligraphy, and keyboarding.
Origins
The ...
.
Unicode
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
does not encode Fraktur as a separate script. Instead, Fraktur is considered a "presentation form" of the Latin alphabet. Thus, the additional ligatures that are required for Fraktur typefaces will not be encoded in Unicode: support for these ligatures is a font engineering issue left up to font developers.
There are, however, two sets of "Fraktur" symbols in the
Unicode block
A Unicode block is one of several contiguous ranges of numeric character codes (code points) of the Unicode character set that are defined by the Unicode Consortium for administrative and documentation purposes. Typically, proposals such as the ad ...
s of
Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols
Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols is a Unicode block comprising styled forms of Latin alphabet, Latin and Greek alphabet, Greek letters and decimal numerical digit, digits that enable mathematicians to denote different notions with different ...
,
Letterlike Symbols
Letterlike Symbols is a Unicode block containing 80 characters which are constructed mainly from the glyphs of one or more letters. In addition to this block, Unicode includes full styled mathematical alphabets, although Unicode does not expli ...
, and
Latin Extended-E
Latin Extended-E is a Unicode block containing Latin script characters used in German dialectology ( Teuthonista),, Anthropos alphabet, Sakha
Sakha, officially the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia),, is the largest republic of Russia, locate ...
. The
long s
The long s , also known as the medial s or initial s, is an archaism, archaic form of the lowercase letter . It replaced the single ''s'', or one or both of the letters ''s'' in a 'double ''s sequence (e.g., "ſinfulneſs" for "sinfulness" ...
,
ß, and the
umlauted vowels are not encoded, as the characters are meant to be used in mathematics and phonetics, so they are not suitable for typesetting German-language texts.
:
𝔄 𝔅 ℭ 𝔇 𝔈 𝔉 𝔊 ℌ ℑ 𝔍 𝔎 𝔏 𝔐 𝔑 𝔒 𝔓 𝔔 ℜ 𝔖 𝔗 𝔘 𝔙 𝔚 𝔛 𝔜 ℨ
:
𝔞 𝔟 𝔠 𝔡 𝔢 𝔣 𝔤 𝔥 𝔦 𝔧 𝔨 𝔩 𝔪 𝔫 𝔬 𝔭 𝔮 𝔯 𝔰 𝔱 𝔲 𝔳 𝔴 𝔵 𝔶 𝔷
:
𝕬 𝕭 𝕮 𝕯 𝕰 𝕱 𝕲 𝕳 𝕴 𝕵 𝕶 𝕷 𝕸 𝕹 𝕺 𝕻 𝕼 𝕽 𝕾 𝕿 𝖀 𝖁 𝖂 𝖃 𝖄 𝖅
:
𝖆 𝖇 𝖈 𝖉 𝖊 𝖋 𝖌 𝖍 𝖎 𝖏 𝖐 𝖑 𝖒 𝖓 𝖔 𝖕 𝖖 𝖗 𝖘 𝖙 𝖚 𝖛 𝖜 𝖝 𝖞 𝖟
See also
*
*
*
*
* (letter ''ß'')
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Notes
References
Further reading
* Bain, Peter and Paul Shaw. ''Blackletter: Type and National Identity.'' Princeton Architectural Press: 1998. .
* Silvia Hartmann: ''Fraktur oder Antiqua. Der Schriftstreit von 1881 bis 1941'', Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1998 (2. üb. A. 1999),
* Fiedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. ''Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History.'' Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. .
* Macmillan, Neil. ''An A–Z of Type Designers.''
Yale University Press
Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous.
, Yale Universi ...
: 2006. .
External links
A complete Fraktur chart(Library of Yale University)
UniFraktur Free Fraktur fonts and resources at
SourceForge
SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrorin ...
Translating newspapers set in Fraktur(familyhistoryfanatics)
{{Authority control
Blackletter
Blackletter typefaces
Latin script
German orthography
16th-century introductions
1941 disestablishments in Germany