Whenever I asked this question as a kid, I was always told that the long s, ſ, was "how they printed s back then", but it always baffled me why they would use both ſ and s in the same sentence,...
Whenever I asked this question as a kid, I was always told that the long s, ſ, was "how they printed s back then", but it always baffled me why they would use both ſ and s in the same sentence, even the same word!
Article TLDR
This article explains that there were different rules for it over time and in different places, but some common rules included not using long s before the letter f, and not using long s at the end of a word.
As a fun bonus, the article threw in an answer to another lifelong question of mine: the German letter Eſzett, ß, looks like a B even though it makes the ss sound because it's an ſ and an S!
I think technically it's ſ and a tailed-z, a German variant of z which looks roughly like Ʒ. Hence why the name of the letter includes the letter z. This is more obvious in some older fonts
because it's an ſ and an S
I think technically it's ſ and a tailed-z, a German variant of z which looks roughly like Ʒ. Hence why the name of the letter includes the letter z. This is more obvious in some older fonts
One of my English professors told us she'd had a student who used a facsimile of an old manuscript for her reference material. Her paper on Shakespeare's "Where the bee sucks, there suck I" was......
One of my English professors told us she'd had a student who used a facsimile of an old manuscript for her reference material. Her paper on Shakespeare's "Where the bee sucks, there suck I" was... noteworthy.
I just remembered that the Greek language has a similar thing with the letter sigma. Wikipedia gives Ὀδυσσεύς (Odysseus) as an example: the first two sigmas look like "σ", but the last sigma in a...
I just remembered that the Greek language has a similar thing with the letter sigma. Wikipedia gives Ὀδυσσεύς (Odysseus) as an example: the first two sigmas look like "σ", but the last sigma in a word looks like "ς". And there's also a lunate sigma ("Ϲ", lowercase "ϲ") whose usage feels similar to long s. Wikipedia again: "In modern, edited Greek texts, the lunate sigma typically appears primarily in older typesetting."
Now I'm wondering if it's at all connected to long s, because it's a funny coincidence that both languages would have special rules for the character that produces the "sss" sound.
I recall an interesting point of the manuscript of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography being that, written over a number of years during eras when the popularity of the medial s changed, the use of...
I recall an interesting point of the manuscript of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography being that, written over a number of years during eras when the popularity of the medial s changed, the use of ſ seems different in different sections.
My favorite example of this was from a text a good friend of mine was reading for grad school, with a mention of "little ſucking gods". Little sucking gods are kittens, apparently, at least in the...
My favorite example of this was from a text a good friend of mine was reading for grad school, with a mention of "little ſucking gods". Little sucking gods are kittens, apparently, at least in the context of ancient Egyptian cat worship.
Whenever I asked this question as a kid, I was always told that the long s, ſ, was "how they printed s back then", but it always baffled me why they would use both ſ and s in the same sentence, even the same word!
Article TLDR
This article explains that there were different rules for it over time and in different places, but some common rules included not using long s before the letter f, and not using long s at the end of a word.
As a fun bonus, the article threw in an answer to another lifelong question of mine: the German letter Eſzett, ß, looks like a B even though it makes the ss sound because it's an ſ and an S!
I think technically it's ſ and a tailed-z, a German variant of z which looks roughly like Ʒ. Hence why the name of the letter includes the letter z. This is more obvious in some older fonts
That makes sense. I was just assuming it was some kind of S, the article doesn't specify
One of my English professors told us she'd had a student who used a facsimile of an old manuscript for her reference material. Her paper on Shakespeare's "Where the bee sucks, there suck I" was... noteworthy.
I just remembered that the Greek language has a similar thing with the letter sigma. Wikipedia gives Ὀδυσσεύς (Odysseus) as an example: the first two sigmas look like "σ", but the last sigma in a word looks like "ς". And there's also a lunate sigma ("Ϲ", lowercase "ϲ") whose usage feels similar to long s. Wikipedia again: "In modern, edited Greek texts, the lunate sigma typically appears primarily in older typesetting."
Now I'm wondering if it's at all connected to long s, because it's a funny coincidence that both languages would have special rules for the character that produces the "sss" sound.
I recall an interesting point of the manuscript of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography being that, written over a number of years during eras when the popularity of the medial s changed, the use of ſ seems different in different sections.
My favorite example of this was from a text a good friend of mine was reading for grad school, with a mention of "little ſucking gods". Little sucking gods are kittens, apparently, at least in the context of ancient Egyptian cat worship.