
Long S - dcminter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s
======
sm4rk0
Interesting that the article doesn't mention Greek lowercase sigma which has
similar rules:

> uppercase Σ, lowercase σ, lowercase in word-final position ς

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma)

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galaxyLogic
The interesting part: "The long s survives in elongated form, with an italic-
styled curled descender, as the integral symbol ∫ used in calculus."

~~~
__coaxialcabal
The notation for the indefinite integral was introduced by Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz in 1675 (Burton 1988, p. 359; Leibniz 1899, p. 154). He adapted the
integral symbol, ∫, from the letter ſ (long s), standing for summa (written as
ſumma; Latin for "sum" or "total").

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral)

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petters
This is very interesting:[https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/google-
ngrams-vs...](https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/google-ngrams-vs-
long-s/)

The word "fuck" was used a lot in the 1600s according to OCR.

~~~
bildung
Well the OCR were humans :) Before Google produced the Waymo (or Maps?)
datasets with recaptcha, it was book digitalization. I remember always being
frustrated when I had to enter the long as as f to make the captcha go away...

~~~
qxnqd
That's true. When the recaptcha was two words, one of it was the control word
(which would make you fail the captcha if wrong) and the other was the word
you were actually OCR'ing. I would always enter the control word correctly and
put "fuck" as the other word. I would get it right 90% of the time :)

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throwanem
If you'd like to be able to use the long S in Emacs, there's a minor mode for
that: [https://github.com/aaron-em/long-s-mode.el](https://github.com/aaron-
em/long-s-mode.el)

It's an older one and I apparently haven't put it on MELPA yet. I can, if
there's interest.

~~~
tempguy9999
"Copyright (c) 2013 Aaron Miller. All rights reverſed. ſhare and Enjoy!" Heh!

I'm not sure bulking up melpa is worth it for the infinitesimal number of
people who would find it useful.

Tangentially I really wish letters eth and thorn had not disappeared. They
were certainly better than what we've got now, the 'th' digraph for both.

~~~
WorldMaker
In English the voiced/unvoiced distinction stopped mattering so merger of eth
and thorn was warranted. A digraph is a sad compromise, but given sh/ch
digraphs its now just a given standard in the language's orthography. It might
be fun to use better letters for all of English's digraphs, but that ship has
probably sailed at this point.

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minikites
The long S is also problematic for OCR:
[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cafe&year_star...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cafe&year_start=1600&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3)

(Google ngram viewer is pulling the word "case" with a long S from the many
legal documents in its corpus)

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susam
On a related note, I have been looking for good references on cursive writing.
While there are many references for cursive writing popular in the US such as
D'Nealian, Zaner-Bloser, etc. there aren't many as many references for joined-
up writing popular in the UK. I was looking for something where the joined-up
style resembles printscript as much as possible. Here are a few resources I
found during my search for anyone interested in British-style joined-up
handwriting:

\- [https://www.cursivewriting.org/joined-cursive-
fonts.html](https://www.cursivewriting.org/joined-cursive-fonts.html)

\- [https://linkpenfonts.co.uk](https://linkpenfonts.co.uk)

Although the second link is the more recent website, I like the fonts
presented in the first link.

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pavlov
In ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the phonetic sign for the S sound was a
vertical bar bent around at its top end:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transliteration_of_Ancient_Egy...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transliteration_of_Ancient_Egyptian#Uniliteral_signs)

Apparently it's officially called "folded cloth", U+132F4.

I wonder if there's an actual lineage here, or if it's just a coincidence that
the S sound is represented as a curved vertical bar across millennia.

~~~
koolba
I’ve wondered if it’s shaped after a snake as the sound matches up
(“sssssss”).

~~~
kps
Perhapsss sssurprisssingly, the sssnake letter is “N”.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-
Sinaitic_script](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Sinaitic_script)

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danans
Faſcinating!

(backſ-away-ſlowly)

~~~
redmorphium
Should be "backs" because long-s isn't used if it's the end of the word.

~~~
CGamesPlay
> Before a hyphen at the end of the line a long ſ must always be used, for
> example Shaftſ-bury.

~~~
seszett
That's when hyphenating a word, not between different words linked by hyphens.

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OJFord
That's exactly what a hyphenated word is.

~~~
monadgonad
No. "Hyphenating a word" here means when a whole word is split by a hyphen to
continue on the next line of a justified column of text. In that case only, a
long s is used before the hyphen.

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aasasd
These days you usually become familiar with that letter through looking at
title pages for old books on Wikipedia.

~~~
squiggleblaz
The still use it on the street signs hereabouts, writing "-straſze" instead of
"-straße".

~~~
tom_mellior
Interesting, where is that?

Wikipedia has an example of a street sign with "ſs":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Waldstra%C3%9FePirna.JPG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Waldstra%C3%9FePirna.JPG)

And of course there are the street signs in Berlin which use a very weird ß,
but it's still an ß as opposed to a "ſz" combination:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Berliner_Stra%C3%9Fe.JPG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Berliner_Stra%C3%9Fe.JPG)

~~~
wholepointofcc
I absolutely love the typographical choices used for Berlin's street signs.
There are multiple variants but I'm talking about the posted one. It also
preserves the old tz-ligature[0], the vertical descender on lower-case Y[1],
as well as both the ch- and the ck-ligature which (being an antiqua font) are
mostly realized in terms of careful kerning [2, 3, 4].

The font is both pleasing, readable, breathable, and has these nods to
Germanic typographical heritage. It's really lovely. Among my favorite details
pertaining to living in Berlin.

[0] [https://www.xn--untergrund-
blttle-2qb.ch/fotos/Strassenschil...](https://www.xn--untergrund-
blttle-2qb.ch/fotos/Strassenschild_luederitzstr_berlin_1.jpg)

[1]
[https://live.staticflickr.com/3730/9668177465_bde765c591_h.j...](https://live.staticflickr.com/3730/9668177465_bde765c591_h.jpg)

[2] [https://fhxb-
museum.de/xmap/media/S16/T1815/image/fhxb_jh_k0...](https://fhxb-
museum.de/xmap/media/S16/T1815/image/fhxb_jh_k02_0430_11_1500px.jpg)

[3]
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d8/M%...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d8/M%C3%B6ckernstra%C3%9Fe_Schild.jpg/1024px-M%C3%B6ckernstra%C3%9Fe_Schild.jpg?1575558184352)

[4]
[http://www.w-volk.de/museum/encke01.jpg](http://www.w-volk.de/museum/encke01.jpg)

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snalty
I was momentarily confused by these when I saw them in some old journal
articles on PubMed. There's a load if you search a really generic term and
sort oldest to newest.

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wodenokoto
I had to read the caption of the poster in order to see that it was "Paradise
Lost" and not "Paradise Loft" ...

~~~
MayeulC
I first came into contact with the long s while reading (IIRC) Antoine de
Lavoisier's memoirs (or papers?) on the nature of diamond. It was very
unnerving to read, as I couldn't see the difference with an "f" before
enquiring more about it, and reading the wikipedia article.

I couldn't find the exact reference, but the book was along the lines of that
one (French):
[https://books.google.fr/books?id=yr3OAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA22](https://books.google.fr/books?id=yr3OAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA22)

