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Why this old book uses f instead of s, except where s is the last letter
- gurjeet 6y agoThe "Translator's Preface" (page 8) has many instances where the letter 's' is replaced with something that looks like lowercase 'f', except where 's' is the last letter of the word. This makes reading the text extremely difficult and infuriating. Consider 'fubject' instead of 'subject', and 'whofe' instead of 'whose'. It's like I suddenly developed a lisp or something. Just curious why the printer of that book may have used this typeface.
- schoen 6y agoThis form of the letter s was standard in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s Wikipedia has a long description of the history and how it went out of use. It's actually not quite identical to the letter f (it's ſ rather than f) and is also the original of the integral sign in calculus.
- simonblack 6y agoThe 's' used be a very long 's', similar to a written 'f' and so was often printed as an 'f'. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:S_long_serif_et_sans_serif.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:S_long_serif_et_sans... This is similar to the German 'ss' or 'sz' (one long 's' followed by a short 's') which when printed or written in the Gothic font looks like a Greek 'beta'. https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/68183/how-to-design-the-letter-%C3%9F-eszett-or-sharp-s https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/68183/how-...