What I have learnt from Reviving the rules of Typography - David Jury

I found this book very interesting and useful when it came to learning more about some of the different type styles that I have been studying.

Blackletter
Blackletter can also be called Gothic, Textura, Fraktur or Old English.
A form of Blackletter was used for Gutenberg's 42 lined bible which was the first book published in the Western world to have survived. This type was described byAF Johnston "An upright and angular letter, characterised by an almost entire absence of curves" and was believed to be based on type derived from Roman inscriptions. It still continues to be used occasionally in Europe.
Johnston mentions that Gutenberg's type is difficult to differentiate between, such an an n being made up of two i's placed in contact. However people say that it has such an immaculate setting that offers a balance that has never been surpassed.
Blackletter is still used for newspaper mastheads, legal documents and organically produced food. Due to its German originals and Hitlers application of it as the "True German Typeface" it has also got associations with more disturbing connotations.

Old Style
Old Style represents the earliest Roman typefaces. Roman typefaces are made up of two distinct parts, The Uppercase or capitals derived from Roman stone inscriptions and the lowercase developed from hand-written books of christian scribes in Northern Europe.
Shortly after Gutenberg's invention of moveable type hand written and stone inscribed Roman lettering was able to be cut into metal type.
The characteristic associated with Old style focus on the quality of hand written font that would be produced with a broad-nibbed pen with a varying width thickness.
The appearance of books adapted with the developments in the printing process. Original Old Style typefaces such as Garamond, Plantin, Janson, Caslon etc are still considered to be amongst the most readable typefaces and therefore are frequently used in publications.