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Thelong s,⟨ſ⟩, also known as themedials orinitials, is anarchaic form of thelowercase letter⟨s⟩, found mostly in works from the late 8th to early 19th centuries. It replaced one or both[a] of the letters in a double-s sequence (e.g., "ſinfulneſs" for "sinfulness" and "poſſeſs" or "poſseſs" for "possess", but never "poſſeſſ").[1] The modern⟨s⟩letterform is known as the "short", "terminal", or "round"s. In typography, the longs is known as a type ofswash letter, commonly referred to as a "swashs".[2] The longs is the basis of the first half of thegrapheme of the German alphabetligature letter⟨ß⟩,[3] (eszett orscharfes s, 'sharps'). As with other letters, the longs may have a variant appearance depending on typeface:ſ,ſ,ſ,ſ.
This list of rules for the longs is not exhaustive, and it applies only to books printed during the 17th to early 19th centuries in English-speaking countries.[1] Similar rules exist for other European languages.[1]
Longs was always used (ſong,ſubſtitute), except:
Upper-case letters are always the roundS; there is no upper-case longs.
A rounds was always used at the end of a word ending with⟨s⟩:his,complains,ſucceſs
However, longs was maintained in abbreviations such asſ. forſubſtantive (substantive), andGeneſ. forGeneſis (Genesis).
Before an apostrophe (indicating an omitted letter), a rounds was used:us'd andclos'd.
Before or after anf, a rounds was used:offset,ſatisfaction.
In the 17th and early 18th centuries, the rounds was used beforek andb:ask,husband,Ailesbury,Salisbury,Shaftsbury;[4] in the late 18th century, the longs was used instead:aſk,huſband,Aileſbury,SaliſburyShaftſbury.
These two exceptions applied only if the letters were physically adjacent on the page, and longs was used if the two were separated by ahyphen and line break, e.g.,off-ſet,Saliſ-bury.
There were no special exceptions for a doubles. The firsts 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 wordBleſſings in thePreamble to the United States Constitution.
This usage was not universal, and a long followed by a shorts is sometimes seen even mid-word (e.g.,Miſsiſsippi).[5]
Rounds was used at the end of each word in a hyphenated compound word:croſs-piece.
In the case of atriple s, such words were normally hyphenated with a rounds, e.g.,croſs-ſtitch, but a rounds was used even if the hyphen was omitted:croſsſtitch.
In handwriting, these rules did not apply—the longs was usually confined to preceding a rounds, either in the middle or at the end of a word—for example,aſsure,bleſsings.[1]
The ligatureſt, alongsidech,ck, andtȥ, is immune to spaced setting. However, it is usually undone as a ligature, contrary to the others. A different case altogether isſȥ = ß as it is considered a single letter.
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.
at the end of (non-abbreviated) words: e.g.,das Haus, der Kosmos, des Bundes, das Pils (however:im Hauſe, die Häuſer, das Pilſener)
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. (not before inflectional endings witht and possiblyschwa [ə]): e.g.,Wachstum, Weisheit, Häuslein, Mäuschen, Bistum, nachweisbar, wohlweislich, boshaft (however:er reiſte, das ſechſte, cf. belowſt)
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.,kosmiſch, brüskieren, Realismus, lesbiſch, Mesner; Oswald, Dresden, Schleswig, Osnabrück 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.,ſauſen, einſpielen, ausſpielen, erſtaunen,ſkandalös, Pſyche, Miſanthrop (syllables:Mi⋅ſan⋅throp) The same applies for the beginning of a syllable of a suffix like-ſel, -ſal, -ſam, etc.: e.g.,Rätſel, Labſal, ſeltſam
inſp andſt (since 1901 alsoſz), unless they arise by happenstance (via a connecting s or composition); that includes flexion suffixes starting witht: e.g.,Weſpe, Knoſpe, faſten, faſzinierend, Oſzillograph, Aſt, Haſt, Luſt, einſt, du ſtehſt, meiſtens, beſte, knuſpern; er reiſt, du lieſt, es paſſte (modern orthography; traditionally:paßte),ſechſte, Gſtaad
inmultigraphs that represent a single sound such asſch (to represent/ʃ/, but not/sx/) and Englishſh and doubled consonantsſſ andſs: e.g.,Buſch, Eſche, Wunſch, wünſchen, Flaſh, Waſſer, Biſſen, Zeugniſſe, Faſs (modern orthography.; traditionally:Faß), however:Eschatologie Also applies to double s throughassimilation: e.g.,aſſimiliert, Aſſonanz
beforel, n, andr if ane is omitted: e.g.,unſre, Pilſner, Wechſler however:Zuchthäusler, Oslo, Osnabrück
before anapostrophe and other forms of abbreviation: e.g.,ich laſſ’ es (casual forich laſſe es),ſ. (common abbreviation forſiehe)
when the initial ſ of a word is merged with and has priority over the terminal s of a prefix: e.g., intranſzendent, tranſzendieren, etc.; in this case, the initial ſ ofſzend is merged with the terminal s of thetrans prefix due toz 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., inAsbest vs.Aſbest as it is spokenAs⋅best, but comes fromAncient Greekἄσβεστος composed ofᾰ̓- plusσβέννῡμῐ, meaninga is a prefix, and thus, a long ſ follows.
InFraktur, the ligature ſt (Unicode:U+FB05ſtLATIN SMALL LIGATURE LONG S T) as the ligatures ch and ck, is "immune" tospaced setting.
The longs was derived from the oldRoman cursivemedials,⟨⟩.[6] When the distinction betweenmajuscule (uppercase) andminuscule (lowercase) letter forms became established,toward the end of the eighth century, it developed a more vertical form.[7] During this period, it was occasionally used at the end of a word, a practice that quickly died but that was occasionally revived inItalianprinting between about 1465 and 1480. Thus, the general rule that the longs never occurred at the end of a word is not strictly correct, although the exceptions are rare and archaic. The doubles in the middle of a word was also written with a longs and a shorts, as in: "Miſsiſsippi".[5] In Germantypography, the rules are more complicated: shorts also appears at the end of each component within a compound word, and there are more detailed rules and practices for special cases.
Two words "ſecret foe" (secret foe) extracted from the 1667 printing of the poem "Paradise Lost" (Book IV page 1), enabling comparison of longs and f
The longs is often confused with the minuscule⟨f⟩, sometimes even having anf-like nub at its middle but on the left side only in variousromantypefaces and inblackletter. There was no nub in itsitalic type form, which gave the stroke adescender that curled to the left and which is not possible withoutkerning in the other type forms mentioned. For this reason, the shorts was also normally used in combination withf: for example, in "ſatisfaction".[citation needed]
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 anascender 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 lettersf andt, as well as fork. In roman type, except for the crossbar onmedials, all other cross bars disappeared.[citation needed]
The present-day German letterß (German:Eszett orscharfes s; also used inLow German and historicalUpper Sorbianorthographies) is generally considered to have originated in a (Fraktur) ligature of⟨ſz⟩ (which is supported by the fact that the second part of the⟨ß⟩grapheme usually resembles a Frakturz:⟨⟩, hence⟨ſ⟩; seeß for details), although inAntiqua, the ligature of⟨ſs⟩ is used instead. An alternative hypothesis claims that the German letterß originated inTironian notes.[8]
Some old orthographic systems of Slavonic andBaltic languages used⟨ſ⟩ and⟨s⟩ as two separate letters with different phonetic values. For example, theBohorič alphabet of theSlovene language included⟨ſ⟩/s/,⟨s⟩/z/,⟨ſh⟩/ʃ/,⟨sh⟩/ʒ/. In the original version of the alphabet, majuscule⟨S⟩ was shared by both letters.[citation needed]
Incidence of the word-forms "laft" [sic] and "last" in English documents from 1700 to 1900, according to Google's webn-grams database. Based onOCR scans of books, which can misidentify the longs asf.[9]
In general, the longs 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,[10] and is sometimes seen later on in archaic or traditionalist printing such as printed collections of sermons.Woodhouse'sThe Principles of Analytical Calculation, published by theCambridge University Press in 1803, uses the longs throughout its roman text.[11]
Fifth edition ofEncyclopædia Britannica, 1817, top, compared to the sixth edition of 1823; the only change (aside from the elimination of the⟨ct⟩ ligature, as in "attraction") was the removal of the longs from the typeface.
The longs 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 designJohn Bell (1746–1831), who started theBritish Letter Foundry in 1788, is often "credited with the demise of the longs".[12] Paul W. Nash concluded that the change mostly happened very fast in 1800, and believes that this was triggered by theSeditious 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.[13]
Unlike the 1755 edition, which uses the longs throughout,[14] the 1808 edition of thePrinter's Grammar describes the transition away from the use of the longs among type founders and printers in its list of availablesorts:
The introduction of the rounds, instead of the long, is an improvement in the art of printing equal, if not superior, to any which has taken place in recent years, and for which we are indebted to the ingenious Mr. Bell, who introduced them in his edition of the British Classics [published in the 1780s and 1790s]. They are now generally adopted, and the [type founders] scarcely ever cast a longs to their fonts, unless particularly ordered. Indeed, they omit it altogether in their specimens ... They are placed in our list of sorts, not to recommend them, but because we may not be subject to blame from those of the old school, who are tenacious of deviating from custom, however antiquated, for giving a list which they might term imperfect.
An individual instance of an important work usings instead of the longs occurred in 1749, withJoseph Ames'sTypographical Antiquities, about printing in England 1471–1600, but "the general abolition of longs began with John Bell's British Theatre (1791)".[10][b]
In Spain, the change was accomplished mainly between the years 1760 and 1766;[13] for example, the multivolumeEspaña Sagrada made the switch with volume 16 (1762). In France, the change occurred between 1782 and 1793:François Didot designedDidone to be used substantially without longs.[13] The change happened in Italy at about the same time:Giambattista Bodoni also designed hisBodoni typeface without longs.[13] Printers in the United States stopped using the longs between 1795 and 1810: for example,acts of Congress were published with the longs throughout 1803, switching to the shorts in 1804. In the US, a late use of the longs was inLow'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 longs typeset among English printed Bibles can be found in theLunenburg, 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 theUnited Kingdom's colonyNova Scotia also used the longs as late as 1816. Some examples of the use of the long and shorts among specific well-known typefaces and publications in the UK include the following:
Early editions of Scottish poetRobert Burns that have lost their title page can be dated by their use of the longs; that is, James Currie's edition of theWorks of Robert Burns (Liverpool, 1800 and many reprintings) does not use the longs, while editions from the 1780s and early 1790s do.[citation needed]
In printing, instances of the longs continue in rare and sometimes notable cases in the UK until the end of the 19th century, possibly as part of a consciously antiquarian revival of old-fashioned type. For example:
German handwriting (Bastarda), 1496, showing long and rounds (as well as anr rotunda) in "priesters""Miss Austen's"—an example of a handwritten longs in a letter fromCharlotte Brontë to G. H. Lewes, 12 January 1848
After its decline and disappearance in printing in the early years of the 19th century, the longs persisted into the second half of the century in manuscript. In handwriting used for correspondence and diaries, its use for a singles seems to have disappeared first: most manuscript examples from the 19th century use it for the firsts in a doubles. For example,
Charlotte Brontë used the longs, as the first in a doubles, in some of her letters, e.g., "Miſs Austen" in a letter to the criticG. H. Lewes, 12 January 1848; in other letters, however, she uses the shorts, for example in an 1849 letter toPatrick Brontë, her father.[23] Her husbandArthur Bell Nicholls used the longs in writing toEllen Nussey of Brontë's death.[24]
Edward Lear regularly used the longs in his diaries in the second half of the 19th century; for example, his 1884 diary has an instance in which the firsts in a doubles is long: "Addreſsed".[25]
Wilkie Collins routinely used the longs for the first in a doubles in his manuscript correspondence; for example, he used the longs in the words "mſs" (manuscripts) and "needleſs" in a 1 June 1886 letter to Daniel S. Ford.[26]
For these as well as others, the handwritten longs may have suggested type and a certain formality as well as the traditional. Margaret Mathewson "published" herSketch of 8 Months a Patient in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, A.D. 1877 of her experiences as a patient ofJoseph Lister in theRoyal Infirmary of Edinburgh by writing copies out in manuscript.[c] In place of the firsts in a doubles, Mathewson recreated the longs in these copies, a practice widely used for both personal and business correspondence by her family, who lived on the remote island ofYell, Shetland. The practice of using the longs in handwriting on Yell, as elsewhere, may have been a carryover from 18th-century printing conventions, but it was not unfamiliar as a convention in handwriting.[citation needed]
A sign bar for a shop inBerlin (2002), written in a Fraktur typeface
The longs survives in elongated form, with an italic-styled curled descender, as theintegral symbol (∫) used incalculus.Gottfried Leibniz based the character on the Latinsumma ('sum'), which he wroteſumma. This use first appeared publicly in his paperDe Geometria, published inActa Eruditorum of June 1686,[27] but he had been using it in private manuscripts at least since 29 October 1675.[28] The integral of a functionf (x) with respect to a real variablex over the interval[a,b] is typeset as:
In Nordic and German-speaking countries, relics of the longs continue to be seen in signs and logos that use various forms ofFraktur-style typefaces. Examples include the logos of the Norwegian newspapersAftenpoſten andAdresſeaviſen; the packaging logo for FinnishSiſu pastilles; and the GermanJägermeiſter logo.
In the 1993Turkmen orthography,⟨ſ⟩ represented/ʒ/; however, it was replaced by 1999 by the letter⟨ž⟩. The capital form was⟨£⟩, which was replaced by⟨Ž⟩.[33][34]
An echo of the longs survives today in the form of the mark/, popularly known as a "slash" but formally named asolidus. The mark is an evolution of the longs which was used as the abbreviation for 'shilling' in Britain's pre-decimal currency, originally written as in 7ſ 6d, later as "7/6", meaning "seven shillings and six pence".[35]
^Depending on whether they appear in the end or middle of a word, respectively. Some texts starting from the late 18th century had it exclusively replace the firsts, however. A more detailed explanation follows below.
^For fuller information, Attar cites:Nash, Paul W. (2001). "The Abandoning of the Long 's' in Britain in 1800".Journal of the Printing Historical Society (3):3–19.
^Berger, Sidney (2016).The Dictionary of the Book: A Glossary for Book Collectors, Booksellers, Librarians, and Others. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 252, 295.ISBN9781442263390.
^Cheng, Karen (2006).Designing Type. Laurence King Publishing. p. 212.ISBN9781856694452.
^Yule, John-David.Concise Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. Crescent Books (1978)ISBN9780517486108 p. 490
^Davies, Lyn (2006),A is for Ox, London: Folio Society.
^Bollwage, Max (1999). "Ist das Eszett ein lateinischer Gastarbeiter?".Gutenberg-Jahrbuch [Gutenberg Yearbook] (in German). Gutenberg-Gesellschaft. pp. 35–41.ISBN978-3-7755-1999-1. Cited and discussed in:Stötzner, Uta (2006). "Die Geschichte des versalen Eszetts".Signa (in German).9. Grimma:21–22.ISBN978-3-933629-17-3.
^abAttar, Karen (2010). "S and Long S". In Michael Felix Suarez; H. R. Woudhuysen (eds.).Oxford Companion to the Book. Vol. II. Oxford University Press. p. 1116.ISBN9780198606536..
^Bell, John (2010). Michael Felix Suarez; H. R. Woudhuysen (eds.).Oxford Companion to the Book. Vol. I. Oxford University Press. p. 516.ISBN9780198606536.
^Wells, John Edwin (1970).A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1500. Modern Language Association of America. p. 548..
^Daniel Hack (2005).The Material Interests of the Victorian Novel. Victorian Literature and Culture series. University of Virginia Press. p. 12. Figure 1 prints a facsimile of a sample page.
^J. A. Sutherland (2013). "Henry Esmond: The Virtues of Carelessness".Thackeray at Work (reprint). Bloomsbury Academic Collections: English Literary Criticism: 18th–19th Centuries. London and New York:Bloomsbury Academic:56–73.doi:10.5040/9781472554260.ch-003.
^Coleridge, Mary (1896).Fancy's Following. Oxford: Daniel Press.
^Smith, Margaret, ed. (2000).The Letters of Charlotte Brontë: With a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends. Vol. Two (1848–1851). Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 406 and 407..
^Smith, Margaret, ed. (2004).The Letters of Charlotte Brontë: With a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends. Vol. Three (1852–1855). Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. opposite 217..
^Strizver, Ilene (2014).Type Rules!: The Designer's Guide to Professional Typography (4th ed.). Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley. p. 34.ISBN978-1-118-45405-3.
^Frings, Andreas (2007).Sowjetische Schriftpolitik zwischen 1917 und 1941 – eine handlungstheoretische Analyse [Soviet scripts politics between 1917 and 1941 – an action-theoretical analysis] (in German). F. Steiner.ISBN978-3-515-08887-9..
^Fowler, Francis George (1917). "solidus".The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English. p. 829 – via archive.org.sǒ·lidus, n. (pl. -di). (Hist.) gold coin introduced by Roman Emperor Constantine; (only in abbr.s.) shilling(s), as 7s. 6d., £1 1s.; the shilling line (forſ or longs) as in 7/6. [LL use of LSOLIDus] (The nameshillingis derived from a Roman coin, thesolidus.)
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⟩.[6] When the distinction betweenmajuscule (uppercase) andminuscule (lowercase) letter forms became established,toward the end of the eighth century, it developed a more vertical form.[7] During this period, it was occasionally used at the end of a word, a practice that quickly died but that was occasionally revived inItalianprinting between about 1465 and 1480. Thus, the general rule that the longs never occurred at the end of a word is not strictly correct, although the exceptions are rare and archaic. The doubles in the middle of a word was also written with a longs and a shorts, as in: "Miſsiſsippi".[5] In Germantypography, the rules are more complicated: shorts also appears at the end of each component within a compound word, and there are more detailed rules and practices for special cases.
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