German alphabet
The modern German alphabet consists of the twenty-six letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet plus four extra letters placed at the end:
| Uppercase forms | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 | Ä | Ö | Ü | ẞ |
| Lowercase forms | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 | ä | ö | ü | ß |
German uses letter-diacritic combinations (Ä/ä, Ö/ö, Ü/ü) using the umlaut and one ligature (ẞ/ß (called eszett (sz) or scharfes S, sharp s)).
Before 1940 German employed Fraktur, a blackletter typeface (see also Antiqua–Fraktur dispute), and Kurrent, various cursives that include the 20-century Sütterlin. Grundschrift describes several current handwriting systems.