7 ms·
The rules for using "ſ" (long s)
- thristian 16y agoIt'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.
- dfranke 16y ago'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.
- ugh 16y agoWhat does “proper” mean? The author merely says that he decided to use the long s in one of the texts he quoted, he makes no claim that everybody should quote texts containing the long s just like that. I can see nothing wrong with that as long as the author doesn’t claim that to be the only “proper” way to do it. (He does not.) This is what he says about his choice in the linked article: “I’ve copied out one of my favourite stories below (complete with long s for authenticity) […]” To me, this points to an explicitly aesthetic decision, not an invention of a rule for the proper use of the long s in quoted texts.
- crux 16y agoYou 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 16y agoI'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".
- crux 16y agoTo what end? Do you suspect that the author thinks there was another letter of the alphabet in the 18th century?
- dfranke 16y agoNo. 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.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- ugh 16y agoSo “proper” just refers to your aesthetic preference, not to any actual rule?
- dfranke 16y agoUh, 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.
- celoyd 16y agoI agree, but I think the author does too. As far as I see, there is no claim that we should reproduce the long s as such in quotations where it’s not at issue. It’s only presented as a matter of historical interest. (Before this, I had thought that in certain times and places it was not used at the end of syllables, which would have carried information in the same way that hyphenation does.)
- dfranke 16y agoAs far as I see, there is no claim that we should reproduce the long s as such in quotations where it’s not at issue. He not merely claimed, but did, exactly that in the article linked from the first sentence.
- celoyd 16y agoGiven that the blog is about fetishizing the look and feel of old writing and inscription, I’d say it is at issue there.
- gruseom 16y agoThe 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 16y agoI 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?
- corin_ 16y agoJust natural evolution of language saw them superseded by alternative words of the same meanings. The same way in a short period of time words like "cool", "wicked", "fab. [abbrv.]" can rise and fall in cultural popularity, so can words like "thou" and "you".
- shader 16y agoThou/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 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"
- dedward 16y agoInteresting - 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....
- zbanks 16y agoI've always wondered this, but I could never figure out how to google it. ...I'm juft glad we ftopped ufing it.
- jrockway 16y agoI find the long f confufing and hard to read. Pleafe do not revive it.
- Luyt 16y agoI 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ß
- guns 16y agoAgreed. It's particularly evident here: http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Blog/Images/Micrographia.jpg 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.
- Groxx 16y ago>Not to be confused with its capital form, ẞ, the Latin letter B, or the Greek letter β (beta). I know I won't, now that I've been warned.
- barnaby 16y agoWow, 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.
- ludwigvan 16y agoActually, long s is still very frequently used, and will never become extinct. Look at the integral sign! Long live long s.
- mahmud 16y agoCould someone sum up for me why integration uses "S"? It doesn't square with me, nor does it add up.
- gmartres 16y agoFor a great explanation of how integral relates to summing the product of infinitely many terms, see: http://betterexplained.com/articles/a-calculus-analogy-integrals-as-multiplication/ http://betterexplained.com/articles/a-calculus-analogy-integ...
- tedunangst 16y agowikipedia tells me it is because S stands for the latin word summa.
- ludwigvan 16y agoExactly.(Riemann) integral is summation with infinitesimal quantities. (It was Leibniz who used long s to denote integration, though. http://jeff560.tripod.com/calculus.html http://jeff560.tripod.com/calculus.html ) Also, for discrete summation, capital 's'igma is used.
- dedward 16y agoThe 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")
- calebegg 16y ago...Did you read the article? It discusses that rule and how it is not a complete description of the actual use of the character.
- CallMeV 16y agoIngenious. This article served to clarify something I had wondered about for years.