This study pinpoints central linguistic and media-historical aspects of the moralische Wochenschriften in Germany (periodical papers modeled on the British "Tatler" and "Spectator"). The analyses are paradigmatic and the material is taken from Gottsched's "Die Vernünfftigen Tadlerinnen". This periodical is discussed in terms of the formal, syntactic, communicative, metalinguistic and intertextual features it displays. The linguistic form is determined to a very large degree by the moral and language-didactic claims and ambitions of the magazine. Both on the formal and on the communicative level there are dominant recurring patterns observable. Corresponding to these a preference for certain rhetorical figures is identifiable.