Long s

The long s (ſ) is an archaic form of the lower case letter s. It replaced a single s, or the first in a double s, at the beginning or in the middle of a word (e.g. 'ſinfulneſs' for 'sinfulness' and 'ſucceſsful' for 'successful'), and in ligature form (e.g. 'Tiſſick' for 'Tissick'). The modern letterform is known as the short, terminal, or round s.The introduction of the round s, instead of the long, is an improvement in the art of printing equal, if not superior, to any which has taken place in recent years, and for which we are indebted to the ingenious Mr. Bell, who introduced them in his edition of the British Classics . They are now generally adopted, and the scarcely ever cast a long s to their fonts, unless particularly ordered. Indeed, they omit it altogether in their specimens ... They are placed in our list of sorts, not to recommend them, but because we may not be subject to blame from those of the old school, who are tenacious of deviating from custom, however antiquated, for giving a list which they might term imperfect. The long s (ſ) is an archaic form of the lower case letter s. It replaced a single s, or the first in a double s, at the beginning or in the middle of a word (e.g. 'ſinfulneſs' for 'sinfulness' and 'ſucceſsful' for 'successful'), and in ligature form (e.g. 'Tiſſick' for 'Tissick'). The modern letterform is known as the short, terminal, or round s. The long s was derived from the old Roman cursive medial s. When the distinction between majuscule (uppercase) and minuscule (lowercase) letter forms became established, toward the end of the eighth century, it developed a more vertical form. During this period, it was occasionally used at the end of a word, a practice that quickly died but that was occasionally revived in Italian printing between about 1465 and 1480. Thus, the general rule that the long s never occurred at the end of a word is not strictly correct, although the exceptions are rare and archaic. The double s in the middle of a word was also written with a long s and a short s, as in: 'Miſsiſsippi'. In German typography, the rules are more complicated: short s also appears at the end of each component within a compound word, and there are more detailed rules and practices for special cases. The long s is often confused with the minuscule f, sometimes even having an f-like nub at its middle, but on the left side only, in various Roman typefaces and in blackletter. There was no nub in its italic type form, which gave the stroke a descender that curled to the left and which is not possible without kerning in the other type forms mentioned. For this reason, the short s was also normally used in combination with f: for example, in 'ſatisfaction'. The nub acquired its form in the blackletter style of writing. What looks like one stroke was actually a wedge pointing downward. The wedge's widest part was at that height (x-height), and capped by a second stroke that formed an ascender that curled to the right. Those styles of writing and their derivatives in type design had a cross-bar at the height of the nub for letters f and t, as well as for k. In Roman type, except for the crossbar on medial s, all other cross bars disappeared. The long s was used in ligatures in various languages. Three examples were for si, ss, and st, besides the German letter ß. The long s survives in Fraktur typefaces. Greek sigma also features an initial/medial σ and a final ς, which may have supported the idea of such specialized s forms. In Renaissance Europe, a significant fraction of the literate class was familiar with Ancient Greek. The present-day German letter ß (Eszett or scharfes S in German; also used in Low German and historical Upper Sorbian orthographies) is considered to have originated in a ligature of ſz (which is supported by the fact that the second part of the ß glyph usually resembles a Fraktur z), or ſs (see ß for more), or some Tironian notes. Some old orthographic systems of Slavonic and Baltic languages used ſ and s as two separate letters with different phonetic values. For example, the Bohorič alphabet of the Slovene language included ſ /s/, s /z/, ſh /ʃ/, sh /ʒ/. In the original version of the alphabet, majuscule S was shared by both letters; later a modified character Š became the counterpart of ſ. Also, some Latin alphabets devised in the 1920s for some Caucasian languages used the ſ for some specific sounds. These orthographies were in actual use until 1938. Some of these had developed a capital form which roughly resembles a smoothed variant of the letter .mw-parser-output .monospaced{font-family:monospace,monospace}U+0295 ʕ .mw-parser-output .smallcaps{font-variant:small-caps}LATIN LETTER PHARYNGEAL VOICED FRICATIVE.