The Strange Surprizing Spelling of Robinson Crusoe

January 6, 2009 7:36 AM

In early English typography, what were the rules for deciding when to use the letter 's', and when to use that thing that looks like an extended 'f'?

In the question about Robinson Crusoe asked a few minutes ago, there is a link to an old printed page. In the text on that page, there are many examples of the letter 's'. Many are modern in appearance, many are old-fashioned. The only 'rule' I can seem to find, is that if the letter in question is at the beginning or end of a word, it gets the modern treatment. But what was the reason for the differentiation? Were these actually two different 'sounds' back then? That seems unlikely ...

posted by woodblock100 to writing & language (6 comments total)

Wikipedia: long s. It would have been used everywhere except for the final character of a word. They weren't different sounds, just different letterforms.
posted by grouse at 7:43 AM on January 6

Aha! 'Long S' ... Thank you grouse. Now that I know what it is called (for searching), some other rules come out of the woodwork:

"The following rules for the use of long s and short s are applicable to books in English, Welsh and other languages published in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and other English-speaking countries during the 17th and 18th centuries."

• short s is used at the end of a word (e.g. his, complains, succeſs)
• short s is used before an apostrophe (e.g. clos'd, us'd)
• short s is used before the letter 'f' (e.g. ſatisfaction, misfortune, transfuſe, transfix, transfer, succeſsful)
• short s is used after the letter 'f' (e.g. offset), although not if the word is hyphenated (e.g. off-ſet)
• short s is used before the letter 'b' in books published during the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century (e.g. husband, Shaftsbury), but long s is used in books published during the second half of the 18th century (e.g. huſband, Shaftſbury)
• short s is used before the letter 'k' in books published during the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century (e.g. skin, ask, risk, masked), but long s is used in books published during the second half of the 18th century (e.g. ſkin, aſk, riſk, maſked)
• Compound words with the first element ending in double s and the second element beginning with s are normally and correctly written with a dividing hyphen (e.g. Croſs-ſtitch, Croſs-ſtaff), but very occasionally may be wriiten as a single word, in which case the middle letter 's' is written short (e.g. Croſsſtitch, croſsſtaff).
• long s is used initially and medially except for the exceptions noted above (e.g. ſong, uſe, preſs, ſubſtitute)
• long s is used before a hyphen at a line break (e.g. neceſ-ſary, pleaſ-ed), even when it would normally be a short s (e.g. Shaftſ-bury and huſ-band in a book where Shaftsbury and husband are normal), although exceptions do occur (e.g. Mans-field)
• short s is used before a hyphen in compound words with the first element ending in the letter 's' (e.g. croſs-piece, croſs-examination, Preſs-work, bird's-neſt)
• long s is maintained in abbreviations such as ſ. for ſubſtantive, and Geneſ. for Geneſis (this rule means that it is practically impossible to implement fully correct automatic contextual substitution of long s at the font level)

posted by woodblock100 at 8:01 AM on January 6 [6 favorites]

Just another semi-related tidbit, the German letter ß (which sounds like "s"), got its form in part because of ſ. The letter ß was originally a combination of the letter ſs or ſz (particularly the "z" that looks like English cursive "z"). As you can see, if you fuse together ſs (or ſz), it looks like ß. Eventually ſ disappeared from German but remains in ß.
posted by kosmonaut at 8:36 AM on January 6

The street signs in Berlin use a font that demonstrates kosmonaut's point.
posted by doiheartwentyone at 9:55 AM on January 6 [1 favorite]

The Wikipedia entry is pretty comprehensive, though in practice, it can vary -- style guides as we now know them didn't exist, and though there was an overall consistency, it sometimes depended upon what the printer had available. (That page has the ſt ligature. Some cheap books don't.) The best modern point of comparison is the Greek sigma, with its terminal form. The long-s starts to fade away from English with the adoption of Baskerville's new-style fonts, and eventually disappears in the early 1800s when modern fonts (Didot/Bodoni) become popular. Lots more here.

When I started my graduate work and began reading original editions from the 17th and 18th century, the long-s stuck out. After a few weeks, it becomes second nature just to read it as an 's'. You see the same differentiation in handwriting: Benjamin Franklin used the long-s, while the younger Jefferson used the small form; the small form is also used in the engrossed copies of the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution.
posted by holgate at 9:59 AM on January 6

Here's a comparative guide to handwritten letter forms of the early modern period.
posted by woodway at 3:49 PM on January 11