The long s, , also known as the medial s or initial s, is an archaic form of the lowercase letter , found mostly in works from the late 8th to early 19th centuries. It could replace one or both of the letter s in a double-s sequence, unless at the end of a word (e.g., "ſinfulneſs" for "sinfulness" and "poſſeſs" or "poſseſs" for "possess", but never "poſſeſſ"). The modern letterform is known as the "short", "terminal", or "round" s.
In typography, the long s is known as a type of swash letter, commonly referred to as a "swash s". As with other letters, the long s may have a variant appearance depending on typeface: ſ, ſ, ſ, ſ. In some typefaces, this letter has a very similar appearance to the letter (lowercase F), distinguished only by the width of the crossbar.
The long s is the basis of the first half of the German ligature ( or , ) and of the Middle Scots .
Rules English This list of rules for the long s is not exhaustive, and it applies only to books printed during the 17th to early 19th centuries in English-speaking countries. Similar rules exist for other European languages.
Long s was always used (ſong, ſubſtitute), except: Upper-case letters are always the round S; there is no upper-case long s. A round s was always used at the end of a word ending with : his, complains, ſucceſs However, long s was maintained in abbreviations such as ſ. for ſubſtantive (substantive), and Geneſ. for Geneſis. Before an apostrophe (indicating an omitted letter), a round s was used: us'd and clos'd. Before or after an f, a round s was used: offset, ſatisfaction. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, the round s was used before k and b: ask, husband, , Salisbury, ; in the late 18th century, the long s was used instead: aſk, huſband, Aileſbury, Saliſbury, Shaftſbury. These two exceptions applied only if the letters were physically adjacent on the page, and long s was used if the two were separated by a hyphen and line break, e.g., off-ſet, Saliſ-bury. There were no special exceptions for a double s. The first s was always long, while the second was long in mid-word (e.g., poſſeſſion), or short when at the end of a word (e.g., poſſeſs). See, for example, the word Bleſſings in the Preamble to the United States Constitution. This usage was not universal, and a long followed by a short s is sometimes seen even mid-word (e.g., Miſsiſsippi).Lowe's 1800 map of the USA Round s was used at the end of each word in a hyphenated compound word: croſs-piece. In the case of a triple s, such words were normally hyphenated with a round s, e.g., croſs-ſtitch, but a round s was used even if the hyphen was omitted: croſsſtitch.
In handwriting, these rules did not apply—the long s was usually confined to preceding a round s, either in the middle or at the end of a word—for example, aſsure, bleſsings.
German
The general idea is that round s indicates the end of a semantic part. Thus, long ſ is used everywhere except at the end of a syllable, where further conditions need to be true.
The following rules were laid down at the German Orthographic Conference of 1901.
The round s is used: at the end of (non-abbreviated) words:e.g., (however: ) at the end of prefixes, as a connecting s and in compounds at the end of the first part-word, even if the following part-word begins with a long ſ:e.g., in derivations with word formation suffixes that begin with a consonant, such as etc. (not before inflectional endings with t and possibly schwa []):e.g., (however: cf. below ſt) at the end of a syllable, even if the syllable is not the end of a (part-)word, common in names and proper nouns:e.g., Many exceptions apply.
Long ſ is used whenever round s is not used (for s): at the beginning of a syllable, i.e. anywhere before the vowel in the center of a syllable:e.g., (for syllables: ; alternative variant: )The same applies for the beginning of a syllable of a suffix like -ſel, -ſal, -ſam, etc.: e.g., in ſp and ſt (since 1901 also ſz), unless they arise by happenstance (via a connecting s or composition); that includes flexion suffixes starting with t:e.g., (modern orthography; traditionally: ), in multigraphs that represent a single sound such as ſch (to represent , but not ) and English ſh and doubled consonants ſſ and ſs:e.g., (modern orthography; traditionally: ), however: Also applies to double s through assimilation:e.g., before l, n, and r if an e is omitted:e.g., however: before an apostrophe and other forms of abbreviation:e.g., (casual for ), (common abbreviation for ) when the initial ſ of a word is merged with and has priority over the terminal s of a prefix:e.g., in etc.; in this case, the initial ſ of ſzend (from Latin ) is merged with the terminal s of the prefix due to z following the ſ.
These rules do not cover all cases and in some corner cases, multiple variants can be found. One such case is whether to apply original semantics (that are largely unknown) or follow spoken syllables; e.g., in vs. as it is spoken As⋅best, but comes from Ancient Greek composed of plus , meaning a is a prefix, and thus, a long ſ follows.
In Fraktur, the ligature ſt (Unicode: ) is not spaced in spaced setting, as with other ligatures.
History
The long s was derived from the old Roman cursive medial s, .Yule, John-David. Concise Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. Crescent Books (1978) p. 490 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.
Similarity to letter f
Modern readers often confuse the long s with the letter (minuscule form of ) as, in some roman and blackletter typefaces, it has an f-like nub at its middle but only on the left side. There was usually no nub in the italic type form of long s, which gave the stroke a descender that curled to the left.
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 crossbar at the height of the nub for letters f and t, as well as for k.
Ligatures
The long s was used in ligatures in various languages. Four examples were , , , and the German letter .
The present-day German letter ß ( or ; also used in Low German and historical Upper Sorbian orthographies) is generally considered to have originated in a (Fraktur) ligature of (which is supported by the fact that the second part of the grapheme usually resembles a Fraktur z: , hence ), although in Antiqua, the ligature of is used instead. An alternative hypothesis claims that the German letter ß originated in Tironian notes. Cited and discussed in:
ſ and s as distinct letters Some old orthographic systems of Slavonic and Baltic languages used and as two separate letters with different phonetic values. For example, the Bohorič alphabet of the Slovene language included , , , . In the original version of the alphabet, majuscule was shared by both letters.
Decline
In general, the long s fell out of use in roman and italic typefaces in professional printing well before the middle of the 19th century. It rarely appears in good-quality London printing after 1800, though it lingers provincially until 1824 and is found in handwriting into the second half of the nineteenth century,. and is sometimes seen later on in archaic or traditionalist printing such as printed collections of sermons. Woodhouse's The Principles of Analytical Calculation, published by the Cambridge University Press in 1803, uses the long s throughout its roman text.
Abandonment by printers and type founders
The long s disappeared from new typefaces rapidly in the mid-1790s, and most printers who could afford to do so had discarded older typefaces by the early years of the 19th century. Pioneer of type design John Bell (1746–1831), who started the British Letter Foundry in 1788, is often "credited with the demise of the long s". Paul W. Nash concluded that the change mostly happened very fast in 1800, and believes that this was triggered by the Seditious Societies Act. To discourage subversive publications, this required printing to name the identity of the printer, and so in Nash's view gave printers an incentive to make their work look more modern. Noted in
Unlike the 1755 edition, which uses the long s throughout, the 1808 edition of the Printer's Grammar describes the transition away from the use of the long s among type founders and printers in its list of available sorts:
An individual instance of an important work using s instead of the long s occurred in 1749, with Joseph Ames's Typographical Antiquities, about printing in England 1471–1600, but "the general abolition of long s began with John Bell's British Theatre (1791)".
In Spain, the change was accomplished mainly between the years 1760 and 1766; for example, the multivolume made the switch with volume 16 (1762). In France, the change occurred between 1782 and 1793: François Didot designed Didone to be used substantially without long s. The change happened in Italy at about the same time: Giambattista Bodoni also designed his Bodoni typeface without long s. Printers in the United States stopped using the long s between 1795 and 1810: for example, acts of Congress were published with the long s throughout 1803, switching to the short s in 1804. In the US, a late use of the long s was in Low's Encyclopaedia, which was published between 1805 and 1811. Its reprint in 1816 was one of the last such uses recorded in the US. The most recent recorded use of the long s typeset among English printed Bibles can be found in the Lunenburg, Massachusetts, 1826 printing by W. Greenough and Son. The same typeset was used for the 1826 printed later by W. Greenough and Son, and the statutes of the United Kingdom's colony Nova Scotia also used the long s as late as 1816. Some examples of the use of the long and short s among specific well-known typefaces and publications in the UK include the following: The Caslon typeface of 1732 has the long s.Philip Gaskell, New Introduction to Bibliography, Clarendon, 1972, p. 210, Figs 74, 75. The Caslon typeface of 1796 has the short s only. In the UK, The Times of London made the switch from the long to the short s with its issue of 10 September 1803. The Catherwood typeface of 1810 has the short s only. Encyclopædia Britannica 5th edition, completed in 1817, was the last edition to use the long s.. The 1823 6th edition uses the short s. The Caslon typeface of 1841 has the short s only. Two typefaces from Stephenson Blake, both 1838–1841, have the short s only.
When the War of 1812 began, the contrast between the non-use of the long s by the United States, and its continued use by the United Kingdom, is illustrated by the Twelfth US Congress's use of the short s of today in the US declaration of war against the United Kingdom, and, in contrast, the continued use of long s within the text of Isaac Brock's counterpart document responding to the declaration of war by the US.