

The rules for using "ſ" (long s) - thristian
http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2006/06/rules-for-long-s.html

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dfranke
'ſ' is just an 's'. It's a typographic variation carrying no semantics. The
proper way to reproduce it in a new medium is simply to use 's' everywhere. To
do this is no more unfaithful to the original work than using Times Roman on
the screen when the original was printed in Caslon.

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crux
You seem to be completely missing the point of this article. What are you
contending? That there was no difference between s and ſ, and that they were
used in free variation? Or that there is no need to know anything about ſ
today because it is no longer in use? In either case, as I said, you've missed
the point.

~~~
dfranke
I'm taking issue with the decision stated in the first sentence: "In my
previous post about the grand old trade of basket-making I included several
extracts from some 18th century books, in which I preserved the long s (ſ) as
used in the original printed texts".

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crux
To what end? Do you suspect that the author thinks there was another letter of
the alphabet in the 18th century?

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dfranke
No. I merely think he's missing the forest for the trees by preserving one
obsolete typographic detail in a historical text yet translating the whole
thing into HTML with minimal styling. This is somewhat akin to completely
remodeling a 100-year-old building yet insisting on preserving the original
knob-and-tube electrical wiring for authenticity -- you lose all the original
charm yet you're still stuck replacing fuses twice a day and offending your
readers every time the word 'succor' appears.

~~~
ugh
So “proper” just refers to your aesthetic preference, not to any actual rule?

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dfranke
Uh, somewhere in between, I think. I'm contending that one way is logical,
conventional, and clear, and the other way is illogical, odd, and confusing. I
think that's a stronger statement than just an aesthetic preference, but I'm
not citing anyone else's prescription.

~~~
ugh
I don’t get it. Seems awfully petty. It just a blogger and what he did is not
in any way wrong. I could understand you if he had made any statement to the
effect that everyone should do it like him but he absolutely did not.

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barnaby
Wow, This was a pleaſure to read! This is the quinteſsential obſcure but
captivating topic that nerds like us _love_. I'm impreſsed by the level of
detail that was put into this.

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Luyt
I found it very interesting to see how the 'ſ' directly followed by a 's' were
combined into the ligurature 'ß'.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ß>

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guns
Agreed. It's particularly evident here:

<http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Blog/Images/Micrographia.jpg>

Understanding that `fs' was mostly a typographical device for adding more
flair to a line certainly makes the German deprecation of the `ß' in favor of
`ss' more palatable.

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thristian
It's not addressed in the article, but I've always wondered whether maybe
long-s was kept around for so long as an affectation of the Greek terminal-
sigma, in much the same way that classically-educated English speakers would
refuse to split infinitives just because it was impossible to do in Latin.

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gruseom
The 1745 example has another interesting usage: "it's" where we would write
"its". When did this become improper? And could it be that all those endless
typo "it's"es online nowadays are not part of a plot to drive me crazy after
all, but rather the return of some older norm?

~~~
JeanPierre
I would suspect that there were some other rules for apostrophes some
centuries ago, but maybe _it's_ / _its_ is some typo that has been in the
English language for centuries?

While talking about the English language, does anyone know what happened to
thou/thee/thy/thine/ye?

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shader
Thou/thee/thy/thine are singular forms, whereas you/ye/your are plural. Just
as we and our became royal pronouns, where a monarch would emphasize that they
spoke for a whole country by referring to themselves in the plural, it became
popular for the upper and eventually middle classes to refer to each other as
plural, as a more respectful or formal usage.

Quoting from Wikipedia (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou>):

 _"Following a process found in other Indo-European languages, thou was later
used to express intimacy, familiarity, or even disrespect, while another
pronoun, you, the oblique/objective form of ye, was used for formal
circumstances"_

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dedward
Interesting - I've read that the common pronunciation where we use "Ye"
pronounced as "Yee" is a mistake - it was always pronounced "The"

It's a vestige of how the Thorne transformed over the years - eventually it
looked very similar a Y with a small "e" above it... leading to someone
looking at an old document to assume it was just a Y.

We could be talking about two separate uses of the word though....

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zbanks
I've always wondered this, but I could never figure out how to google it.

...I'm juft glad we ftopped ufing it.

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ludwigvan
Actually, long s is still very frequently used, and will never become extinct.
Look at the integral sign! Long live long s.

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mahmud
Could someone sum up for me why integration uses "S"? It doesn't square with
me, nor does it add up.

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tedunangst
wikipedia tells me it is because S stands for the latin word summa.

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ludwigvan
Exactly.(Riemann) integral is summation with infinitesimal quantities. (It was
Leibniz who used long s to denote integration, though.
<http://jeff560.tripod.com/calculus.html> ) Also, for discrete summation,
capital 's'igma is used.

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jrockway
I find the long f confufing and hard to read. Pleafe do not revive it.

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jmillikin
It's not a long f, it's a long ſ

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jrockway
I was demonstrating how my brain parses its use.

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Bud
Perhaps your brain juſt needs more conditioning. Sign up for more long ſ
training seſsions today!

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dedward
The long-s was used in the middle or the beginning of a word. It was not used
as the last letter of a word - the last letter would be a
standard/short/miniscule s.

Per a wikipedia example - ſinfulneſs ("sinfulness")

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calebegg
...Did you read the article? It discusses that rule and how it is not a
complete description of the actual use of the character.

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CallMeV
Ingenious. This article served to clarify something I had wondered about for
years.

