Fraktur (script)

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Latin script (Fraktur variant)
Type	Alphabet
Spoken languages	German¹
Time period	16th century – 1946
Parent systems	Blackletter Latin script (Fraktur variant)
Child systems	Kurrentschrift, including Sütterlin
Sister systems	See Blackletter
Unicode range	`0020`–`00FF`²
ISO 15924	`Latf`

1: And related languages. 2: normal Latin range; see below
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The German word Fraktur ([frakˈtuːr] (help·info) ) refers to a specific sub-group of blackletter typefaces. The word derives from the past participle fractus (“broken”) of Latin frangere (“to break”). As opposed to Antiqua (common) typefaces, which were modelled after antique Roman square capitals and Carolingian minuscule, the blackletter lines are broken up.

The term fraktur is sometimes applied to all of the blackletter typefaces.

1 Characteristics
2 Origin
3 Use
4 Fraktur in Unicode
5 Samples
6 See also
7 References and further reading

[edit] Characteristics

One difference between the Fraktur and other blackletter scripts is that in the small-letter o, the left part of the bow is broken, but the right part is not.

Besides the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, and the ß (ess-zet) and vowels with umlauts as well, Fraktur typefaces include the ſ (long s), sometimes a variant form of the letter r, and a variety of ligatures once intended to aid the typesetter and which have specialized rules for their use. Most older Fraktur typefaces make no distinction between the majuscules "I" and "J" (where the common shape is more suggestive of a "J"), even though the minuscules "i" and "j" are differentiated.

[edit] Origin

The first Fraktur typeface was designed when Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (c. 1493–1519) established a series of books and had a new typeface created specifically for this purpose. Fraktur quickly overtook the earlier Schwabacher and Textualis typefaces in popularity, and a wide variety of Fraktur fonts were carved.

[edit] Use

Overview of some blackletter typefaces

Typesetting in Fraktur was still very common in the early 20th century in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland as opposed to other countries that typeset in Antiqua in the early 20th century. Some books from the time used related blackletter fonts such as Schwabacher; however, the predominant typeface was the Normalfraktur (Fig. 1), which came in various slight variations.

Since the late 18th century, Fraktur began to be replaced by antiqua as a symbol of the classicist age and emerging cosmopolitanism. The debate surrounding this move is known as the Antiqua-Fraktur dispute. However, the shift mostly affected scientific writing, while most belletristic literature and newspapers continued to be printed in broken fonts. This radically changed when on January 3, 1941 Martin Bormann issued a circular letter to all public offices which declared Fraktur (and its corollary, the Sütterlin-based handwriting) to be Judenlettern (Jewish letters) and prohibited further use. It has been speculated that the régime had realized that Fraktur would inhibit communication in the territories occupied during World War II. Fraktur saw a short resurgence after the War, but quickly disappeared in a Germany keen on modernising its appearance.

Fraktur is today used mostly for decorative typesetting; for example, a number of traditional German newspapers still print their name in Fraktur on the first page, and it is also popular for pub signs and the like. In this modern decorative use the Fraktur rules about long s and short s or about ligatures are often disregarded. Individual Fraktur letters are also widely used in mathematics, e.g., to denote Lie algebras, σ-algebras or ideals.

[edit] Fraktur in Unicode

In Unicode, Fraktur is considered a font of the Latin script, and is not encoded separately. However, Fraktur symbols for mathematics are encoded in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP). Bold Fraktur letters (sans ß, as it's not used in mathematics) are encoded from 1D56C–1D59F in the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols area. Regular Fraktur letters are encoded from 1D504–1D537 with the following exceptions: Capital C is encoded 0212D, H 0210C, I 02111, R 0211C, Z 02128 and long s with 017F. Fraktur numerals are not encoded as of Unicode 5.0. Fraktur symbols are supported in the freeware Unicode font Code2001.

[edit] Samples

(The German sentence in the figures [after the name of the font, Walbaum-Fraktur: or Humboldfraktur:] reads: "Victor jagt zwölf Boxkämpfer quer über den Sylter Deich". This is a nonsense sentence meaning "Victor chases twelve box fighters across the dike of Sylt", but contains all 26 letters of the alphabet plus the German umlauts and is thus an example of a pangram.)