An italicized long s used in the word Congress in the United States Bill of Rights. In the United States the Bill of Rights is the name by which the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution are known

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"). Lower case (also lower-case or lowercase) minuscule, or small letters are the smaller form of letters as opposed to upper S is the nineteenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ess or occasionally es (ɛs generally es- The modern letterform was called the terminal or short s. A letterform, letter-form or letter form, is a term used especially in typography paleography calligraphy and epigraphy to mean a letter's shape

History

Title page of John Milton's Paradise Lost

The long 's' is derived from the old Roman cursive medial s, which was very similar to an elongated check mark. The title page or (which is no longer synonymous with frontispiece in modern usage of a Book, Thesis or other written work is the page at or near the front John Milton ( 9 December, 1608 – 8 November, 1674) was an English Poet, Prose Polemicist and Paradise Lost is an Epic poem in Blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. A tick (known as a checkmark or check in American English) is a mark (✓ ✔ ☑, etc 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. Capital letters or majuscules pronunciation /məˈdʒʌskyuls ˈmædʒəˌskyuls/ in the Roman alphabet A, B, C, D, Lower case (also lower-case or lowercase) minuscule, or small letters are the smaller form of letters as opposed to upper ^[1] 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. Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest Printing is a process for reproducing text and image typically with ink on Paper using a printing press 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. Lower case (also lower-case or lowercase) minuscule, or small letters are the smaller form of letters as opposed to upper Lower case (also lower-case or lowercase) minuscule, or small letters are the smaller form of letters as opposed to upper F is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ef or eff (ɛf In Typography, "roman" type has two principal meanings both stemming from the stylistic origin of text typefaces from inscriptional capitals used in In Typography, a typeface is a set of one or more Fonts designed with stylistic unity each comprising a coordinated set of Glyphs A typeface usually comprises Blackletter, also known as Gothic script or Gothic minuscule, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 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. In Typography, italic type /ɪˈtælɪk/ or /aɪˈtælɪk/ refers to cursive Typefaces based on a stylized form of calligraphic Handwriting. Typography, a descender is the portion of a letter in a Latin alphabet that extends below the baseline of a font. In Typography, kerning —less commonly mortising (referring to the process of physically removing material from the cast character—is the process of adjusting letter

The nub acquired its form in the blackletter style of writing. Blackletter, also known as Gothic script or Gothic minuscule, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 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. In Typography, the x-height or corpus size refers to the distance between the baseline and the Mean line in a Typeface. Typography, an ascender is the portion of a letter in a Latin-derived alphabet that extends above the Mean line of a font. 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'. The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. The letter ß ( Unicode U+00DF is a letter in the German alphabet.

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' did not 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. Blackletter, also known as Gothic script or Gothic minuscule, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 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). The letter ß ( Unicode U+00DF is a letter in the German alphabet. The letter ß ( Unicode U+00DF is a letter in the German alphabet. Greek also features a normal sigma 'σ' and a special terminal form 'ς', which may have supported the idea of specialized 's' forms. Sigma (upper case Σ, lower case σ; Greek Σιγμα lower case in word-final position ς) is the eighteenth letter of the Greek In Renaissance Europe a significant fraction of the literate class was familiar with Greek.

Modern usage

Long s in Berlin 2002

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. Berlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. The European Space Agency 's INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory ( INTEGRAL) is detecting some of the most energetic radiation that comes from space Calculus ( Latin, calculus, a small stone used for counting is a branch of Mathematics that includes the study of limits, Derivatives This use first appeared publicly in his paper De Geometria, published in Acta Eruditorum of June, 1686,^[2] but he had been using it in private manuscripts since at least 1675. Acta Eruditorum ( Latin for reports acts of the scholars) was the first Scientific journal of the German lands, published from ^[3]

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. Esh ( Majuscule: Ʃ, minuscule: ʃ; Unicode U+01A9 U+0283 is a character used in conjunction with the Latin alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic The voiceless palato-alveolar fricative or domed postalveolar fricative ( IPA) is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages

The long 's' is represented in Unicode by the sign U+017F, and may be represented in HTML as ſ or ſ. In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's HTML, an initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant Markup language for Web pages It provides a means to describe the structure

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^[4] and the same joke forms the basis of Benny Hill's song "Fad-Eyed Fal" (i. " Greensleeves " is a traditional English folk song and tune a ground of the form called a Romanesca. The British duo "Flanders and Swann" were the actor and singer Michael Flanders (1922&ndash1975 and the composer pianist and linguist Donald Swann Alfred Hawthorne Hill ( 21 January 1924 &ndash 19 April 1992) better known as Benny Hill, was a prolific English e. , 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. Stanley Victor Freberg (b August 7, 1926, Los Angeles, California) is an American author recording artist Animation 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. The United States Declaration of Independence is a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4 1776 announcing that the thirteen American colonies then Thomas Jefferson (April 13 1743 – July 4 1826 was the third President of the United States (1801–1809 the principal author of the Declaration of Independence Benjamin Franklin ( April 17 1790 was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. 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. Mad is a monthly American Humor Magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952

The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten ("The evening mail"), the logo of which is written using the long 'ſ', is often humorously referred to as "Aftenpoften". Aftenposten ( Norwegian for "Evening Post" is Norway 's second largest Newspaper (after Verdens Gang) with a circulation of 250 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. Adresseavisen ( is a regional newspaper published daily except Sundays in Trondheim, Norway.

Also, in the English comedy The Vicar of Dibley, there is an episode containing a scene where the character Alice must read a 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. The Vicar of Dibley is a British sitcom created by Richard Curtis and written for its lead actress Dawn French, by Curtis and Paul " (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 is 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'.

See also

• ß (Eszett)
• Esh (letter)
• Integral sign
• R rotunda

Notes

External links

• James Mosley on long s
• The Straight Dope on long s
• The American Declaration of Independence with long s's
• The Rules for Long S
• The Long and the Short of the Letter S
• Example in book of 1696