Long s
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 replaced one or both of the letter s in a double-s sequence. 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". The long s is the basis of the first half of the grapheme of the German alphabet ligature letter,. As with other letters, the long s may have a variant appearance depending on typeface: ſ, ſ, italic;">ſ, ſ.
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, 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, and Geneſ. for Geneſis.
- Before an apostrophe, 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, or short when at the end of a word. 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.
- 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.
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 words:
- 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., Liebesbrief, Arbeitsamt, Donnerstag, Unterſuchungsergebnis, Haustür, Dispoſition, disharmoniſch, dasſelbe, Wirtsſtube, Ausſicht - in derivations with word formation suffixes that begin with a consonant, such as -lein, -chen, -bar, etc. :
- at the end of a syllable, even if the syllable is not the end of a word, common in names and proper nouns:
Many exceptions apply.
Long ſ is used whenever round s is not used :
- at the beginning of a syllable, i.e. anywhere before the vowel in the center of a syllable:
The same applies for the beginning of a syllable of a suffix like -ſel, -ſal, -ſam, etc.:
e.g., Rätſel, Labſal, ſeltſam
- in ſp and ſt, unless they arise by happenstance ; that includes flexion suffixes starting with t:
- in multigraphs that represent a single sound such as ſch and English ſh and doubled consonants ſſ and ſs:
Also applies to double s through assimilation:
e.g., aſſimiliert, Aſſonanz
- before l, n, and r if an e is omitted:
however: Zuchthäusler, Oslo, Osnabrück
- before an apostrophe and other forms of abbreviation:
- when the initial ſ of a word is merged with and has priority over the terminal s of a prefix:
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 or follow spoken syllables; e.g., in Asbest vs. Aſbest as it is spoken As⋅best, but comes from Ancient Greek ἄσβεστος composed of ᾰ̓- plus σβέννῡμῐ, meaning a is a prefix, and thus, a long ſ follows.
In Fraktur, the ligature ſt as the ligatures ch and ck, is "immune" to spaced setting.
History
The long s was derived from the old Roman cursive medial s,. When the distinction between majuscule and minuscule 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''
The long s is often confused with the minuscule, 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 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. In roman type, except for the crossbar on medial s, all other cross bars disappeared.
Ligatures
The long s was used in ligatures in various languages. Four examples were,,, and the German letter ß.The present-day German letter ß is generally considered to have originated in a ligature of , although in Antiqua, the ligature of is used instead. An alternative hypothesis claims that the German letter ß originated in Tironian notes.