The "cursive" font is based on Carolingian minuscule and its offshoots, and is used for characters who can read and have at least some education. (The first dialogue below is from Father Thomas, since there’s no nametag on it).

And the simplest handwritten font is used for characters who can’t read, or who can read but don’t do it much in practice; most of the inhabitants of Tassing speak with this font.

Several of the monks and nuns also speak this way, even though it’s noted in-game that everyone at Kiersau is literate – characters like Wojslav, Matilda, Lukas, and Volkbert all use this font. (Gertrude is in the middle with the cursive font, uniquely among the inhabitants of Kiersau if memory serves.)

So without ever actually saying it, we’re shown that there’s still something of a class divide even within the abbey – between the church officials and the scribes/artists, and the people who are doing the more mundane work in the kitchens, the gardens, the infirmary, etc.

(Notably, when Magdalene talks to the Poor Clares in Act III, even Mother Franziska speaks in cursive and not blackletter; none of the Poor Clares use the highly-educated, but increasingly obsolete, blackletter of their Benedictine predecessors.)

The Druckers, as printers, all speak in type rather than written font, as do the Sommerfelds later on; and their first line of dialogue in a conversation is shown as inverted blocks, to represent how movable type is placed in a printing press.

Andreas, Werner, and other highly-educated/well-traveled characters like Baltas and Sebhat speak in a humanist minuscule font to reflect them as more modern – in their background, if not necessarily their personal philosophy Werner.

Some other notes: Speech bubbles briefly show a slight shine on the most recently-written letters, as if the ink is still wet.

The use of red (and to a lesser extent green and blue) for emphasis reflect how colored ink was used for the same purpose in manuscripts -- a trace of this practice still lingers as an English-language idiom in the phrase "red-letter day" (meaning a holiday or a day that's otherwise special in some way, and coming from the practice of marking feast days in red).

Similarly, the way "typos" in character dialogue are "erased" reflect how errors were corrected while writing on parchment. Unlike paper, parchment is made from animal hide, and it's thick and sturdy enough to withstand having the ink scraped or rubbed off so that mistakes could be fixed, instead of wasting an entire page of expensive parchment and potentially hours of work. (As a side note, parchment also occasionally has natural spots/scars/holes, which were sometimes written around, sewn together, or even incorporated into illustrations and doodles. The more you know 🌠)

Parchment was also often reused, either taking it from discarded books to use for bindings, or -- as happens in the opening -- scraping/washing it clean and writing something else on it (and then it's called a palimpsest). And thematically, of course, Pentiment deliberately invokes this, showing how history is overwritten (sometimes literally) and lost.

(I think it's pretty well-known at this point, but I might as well throw in that the text on that opening page is from The Name of the Rose.)

Also interesting, or at least interesting to me, is that when we see characters’ actual handwriting, it’s cursive – we see it with Andreas, Magdalene, and Guy, despite their speech being humanist minuscule, printed type, and monastic blackletter, respectively. (Granted, all three of them are hyper-literate, so they're not exactly a representative sample.) A little reminder that those font "voices" are a stylistic choice being made, whether by the devs or in-universe by [REDACTED], writing out the manuscript that frames the story for us.

(aw c'mon, I can have little a cornplating. as a treat)

Anyway what’s really interesting is how the fonts change – not so much with Magdalene, but you see it multiple times through Andreas’ perspective, where text is sometimes erased and rewritten in a different font, as Andreas learns more about the person he’s speaking to.

Baron Rothvogel initially speaks in cursive, which changes to humanist writing when Andreas finds out that he’s highly educated, despite not having gone to a university.

Old Til and Florian both start with the simplest “peasant” font; but if Andreas talks to Til and learns that he is a voracious reader with an interest in Roman history, it changes to the cursive font. And in Act II, Florian’s read so many of Claus Drucker's books, and has become so enthused about the availability of printed books, that his speech turns into type.

The Sommerfelds also start out with the generic peasant font, which only turns into type when Andreas learns they’re printers.

Some font changes, like the baron’s and the Sommerfelds’, are written into the story; but if Andreas never stops to have that conversation with Til, or if he gets Florian in trouble in Act I and the abbot forbids Florian to get books from Claus, then the font changes don’t occur. Til’s is entirely dependent on Andreas learning his assumptions were wrong, and Florian’s is dependent on the abbot allowing him to get books from town (which doesn’t happen if you rat him out to Gernot or the archbishop).

So to make a short story long, the font choices and especially the font changes serve as a quick shorthand about certain aspects of the characters, and also show us how Andreas in particular sometimes “rewrites” his perceptions of characters from his initial assumptions – as well as showing us that Andreas’ assumptions are informed by his own biases, and aren’t always correct.

There is a lot of information from Lettermatic themselves here about the process of designing the fonts, it’s pretty interesting stuff!

And a final point about the changing fonts. This one is a spoiler for the ending of the game.

Spoilers for Act III and the climax of the game below!

IHR WURDET GEWARNT

...

ok.

When Andreas meets her, Amalie initially uses the same blackletter that the educated monks and nuns use, which immediately switches to the “peasant” font when Thomas implies to Andreas that she’s illiterate.

That remains the font used for her until the very end, when her role is revealed and it changes again – not to the regular blackletter of the Kiersau monks/nuns, but to her own unique font/hand that we’ve been seeing throughout the game, without realizing it’s hers.

(It should also be noted that the equally unique color comes from the purple-dyed cloth that is just visible, worn under Amalie's white habit.)