What is Old English text?

"Old English" text is the popular name for blackletter lettering: the ornate, angular script with sharp strokes that you see on newspaper mastheads, diplomas, heavy metal logos, and tattoos. It is also called Gothic, Fraktur, or Textura. Despite the name, it has little to do with the Old English language; it grew out of medieval handwriting in Western Europe.

Unicode includes blackletter versions of the Latin alphabet, so you can use this style in bios, posts, messages, and documents without installing a font.

Tool description

This Old English text generator converts plain text into blackletter Unicode characters. Choose between regular and bold styles, then copy the result and paste it anywhere Unicode text is accepted. You can also convert blackletter text back to normal letters.

Examples

Input Old English Old English bold
Hello World β„Œπ”’π”©π”©π”¬ π”šπ”¬π”―π”©π”‘ π•³π–Šπ–‘π–‘π–” 𝖂𝖔𝖗𝖑𝖉
Gothic π”Šπ”¬π”±π”₯𝔦𝔠 π•²π–”π–™π–π–Žπ–ˆ
Kingdom π”Žπ”¦π”«π”€π”‘π”¬π”ͺ π•Άπ–Žπ–“π–Œπ–‰π–”π–’

Features

  • Regular and bold blackletter styles
  • Converts back to plain text
  • Works with uppercase and lowercase English letters
  • Copy and paste anywhere, no font installation needed

How it works

The tool replaces each Latin letter with its counterpart from the Unicode Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block (Fraktur and Bold Fraktur). A few capitals, such as β„­, β„Œ, β„‘, β„œ, and ℨ, are encoded in the older Letterlike Symbols block, and the tool handles those too. Digits, punctuation, and spaces stay as they are.

Tips

  • Only the letters A to Z are converted; blackletter versions of digits do not exist in Unicode
  • Screen readers may read blackletter characters as mathematical symbols, so avoid it for important content
  • Some apps and fonts may not display these characters, and they can appear as empty boxes
  • Search engines and text filters may not recognize styled text as the original words