Everything about Long S totally explained
The
long,
medial or
descending s (
ſ) is a form of the
minuscule letter '
s' formerly used where 's' occurred in the middle or at the beginning of a word, for example ſinfulneſs ("sinfulness"). The modern
letterform was called the
terminal or
short s.
History
The long 's' is derived from the old Roman cursive medial s, which was very similar to an elongated
check mark. When the distinction between
upper case (capital) and
lower case (small) letter-forms became established, towards the end of the eighth century, it developed a more vertical form. At this period it was occasionally used at the end of a word, a practice which quickly died out but was occasionally revived in
Italian printing between about 1465 and 1480. The short 's' was also normally used in the combination 'sf', for example in 'ſatisfaction'. In German written in fraktur, the rules are more complicated: short 's' also appears at the end of distinct elements within a word.
The long 's' is subject to confusion with the
lower case or
minuscule '
f', sometimes even having an 'f'-like nub at its middle, but on the left side only, in various kinds of
Roman typeface and in
blackletter. There was no nub in its
italic typeform, which gave the stroke a
descender curling to the left—not possible with the other typeforms mentioned without
kerning.
The nub acquired its form in the
blackletter style of writing. What looks like one stroke was actually a wedge pointing downward, whose widest part was at that height (
x-height), and capped by a second stroke forming an
ascender curling to the right. Those styles of writing and their derivatives in type design had a cross-bar at height of the nub for letters 'f' and 't', as well as 'k'. In Roman type, these disappeared except for the one on the medial 's'.
The long 's' was used in
ligatures in various languages. Three examples were for 'si', 'ss', and 'st', besides the
German 'double s' '
ß'.
Long 's' fell out of use in Roman and italic typography well before the middle of the 19th century; in French the change occurred from about 1780 onwards, in English in the decades before and after 1800, and in the United States around 1820. This may have been spurred by the fact that long 's' looks somewhat like 'f' (in both its Roman and italic forms), whereas short 's' didn't have the disadvantage of looking like another letter, making it easier to read correctly, especially for people with vision problems.
Long 's' survives in German
blackletter typefaces. The present-day German 'double s' '
ß' (das Eszett "
the ess-zed" or scharfes-ess, the sharp S) is an atrophied
ligature form representing either 'ſz' or 'ſs' (see
ß for more). Greek also features a normal
sigma 'σ' and a special terminal form 'ς', which may have supported the idea of specialized 's' forms. In Renaissance Europe a significant fraction of the literate class was familiar with Greek.
Modern usage
The long 's' survives in elongated form, and with an italic-style curled descender, as the
integral symbol ∫ used in
calculus;
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz based the character on the Latin word
summa (sum), which he wrote
ſumma. This use first appeared publicly in his paper
De Geometria, published in
Acta Eruditorum of June, 1686, but he'd been using it in private manuscripts since at least 1675.
In linguistics a similar glyph (ʃ) (called "
esh") is used in the
International Phonetic Alphabet, in which it represents the
voiceless postalveolar fricative, the first sound in the English word
shun.
The long 's' is represented in
Unicode by the sign U+017F, and may be represented in
HTML as
ſ or
ſ.
Confusion between the long 'ſ' and 'f' has been the subject of much intentional humour, much of it involving phrases like "sucking pig", but
Greenfleaves made an appearance in a
Flanders and Swann monologue about coming up with a Shakespearean hit and the same joke forms the basis of
Benny Hill's song "Fad-Eyed Fal" (for example,
Sad-Eyed Sal), as well as some dialogue in a scene from
Stan Freberg's patriotic musical,
Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America Vol. 1, about the
Declaration of Independence: Upon perusing
Thomas Jefferson's new document
Benjamin Franklin reads "life, liberty and the 'purfoot of happinefs'" and tells Jefferson his s's look like f's.
Mad magazine also makes humorous light of the long s's resemblance to lower case f in
Poor Alfred'f Almanack, although this is somewhat inaccurate, as the long s
never occurred at the end of a word; only either at the beginning or in the middle.
The Norwegian newspaper
Aftenposten ("The evening mail"), the logo of which is written using the long 'ſ', is often humorously referred to as "Aftenpoften". Similarly for the
Adresseavisen, mocked as "Udresfeabifen" because in addition to the long s resembling f, the Fraktur capital A looks like a U and the v is written to resemble a b.
Also, in the English comedy
The Vicar of Dibley, there's an episode containing a scene where the character Alice must read a (reportedly fictional) prayer which contains various long "S"s and is unable to determine which, if any, are "F"s, and which are not, leading to such nonsensical humorous reads as "Ye are the
falt of the Earth and
fainted." (Really: "salt" and "sainted" respectively). The scene ends when Alice is about to pronounce the prayer's final long S word with an "f" but the Vicar interrupts and says it correctly for her. The word is 'succour'.
In Finland there's a sweet pastille called 'Sisu', a Finnish word meaning something like 'stubborn strength'. Finns tend to regard 'sisu' as their national virtue, and the word as untranslatable. 'Sisu' pastilles are sold in a package with the name in a style of fraktur lower-case long 's' and a capital 'S' that looks a little like a 'G'; hence the common joke of referring to the brand as 'Gifu'.
Illustration at http://cache.virtualtourist.com/1/1450571-Sisu_Finnish_Sweets-Turku.jpg
Further Information
Get more info on 'Long S'.
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