Details Bill of Rights Congress of the United States showing a long s in italics

Several long s

The long s (s) is the ancient form of the letter s tiny. Since the standardization of writing by Charlemagne and the appearance of Caroline or Carolingian minuscule, we only used the long s, an uninformed reader confused today with a f. Later came the s or final first used exclusively by late word.

The use of final s gradually became widespread, so far as to entirely replace s long. The text of the Constitution of the United States of America, for example, employs only the long s where s is twofold, as in the words Congress, Class, Business ...

The long s has survived in French and English until the Industrial Revolution. It is no longer in use today, but there is in Germany (see below).

The following illustration shows cons oeils possible in a font serif (serif in English) and a sans serif in Roman and italic.

This letter is in lowercase , which explains why the ligature , consisting of a long s followed by a round s (or z) follows the same principle in capital letters, s and p (s s + s + z or German) go to S and SS.

Origins and plot

The long s, derived from the Latin cursive .

Jobs

The long s was used by almost all the languages of Europe have experienced the Latin alphabet. Here are some examples.

In French

S s long and round

The text to the left is an excerpt from the epistle dedicatory of Paphos Calendar of Voltaire as printed in 1778. It was reproduced by including the long s and round s and did the typography handwriting and spelling at the time. The typography of the era also differs from modern typography by using a space before the comma and that of a short s in the surname Deshoulieres, as if it were Des Houle. The placement and nature accents differ in relation to current spellings.

The long s followed by another s could be written several ways, as the typographer (and sometimes without much coherence) s long as two or a long s followed by a round s, which could lead the ligature was not in the past, limited to German.

French, although more rare, this ligation occurs in competition with any form without tying up the disappearance of the long s. It is found for example in how to properly translate from one language Aultre: advantage of the punctuation of the language French fashion, plus accents of ycelle of Etienne Dolet , edition of 1540 (profession, p. 3) or in Euures Louiza Labe, Lionnoize, reuues & corrected by that Lady of 1556, which edition did not show very consistent in his choices: page 9, we read but pushed just below passing, which is however written past tense p. 4. Moreover, if the publisher has employed the ligature st expected (stayed, p. 4, estoit p. 9), however a ligature round with an s is sometimes used (banquet, p. 9, p. estois 120) .

Finally, note that Cornelius had proposed to retain the long s that when the marked lengthening of the vowel preceding Convention which have not been followed. The words concerned are now a caret .

Here are some possible routes for these characters:

In German

Wachs-tube and Wach-Stube.

German, especially in the spelling called Fraktur , the use of both s obey not only the contextual constraints but also morphological : s round is used at the end of a word or part of compound word , which requires to write correctly, to know the language. Thus, Wachstube, as currently written, can be analyzed and delivered in two ways :

• + Wach Stube "room (Stube) Standby (Wach)" / vax.tu b /;
• Wachs + Tube, "Tube (Tube) wax (Wachs)" / vaks.tu b /.

The spelling lifted once the ambiguity Wach + Stube was written while Wachstube Wachs + Wachstube Tube was written. Using a round s marked the end of a virtual word composition (in the manner of Voltaire Deshoulieres in the text quoted above).

In the current spelling of the language, only the ligature ( scharfes S ) remains, ligation can be done up to s and s or s and z. Is there still use reduced due to a major spelling reform in 1998.

English

Preserving the

The mathematical employ a final avatar of the long s as a symbol of the integral : . The co-inventor of the concept of integral sum, Leibnitz , used the first word of the phrase in Latin, summa ("sum"), written summa and retained the original.

It exists in the International Phonetic Alphabet another variant of the long s called esh , used to record the post-alveolar fricative consonant deaf that you hear at the beginning of the word cat in French (denoted by the digraph ch). It is now found in several spellings of recent African languages (such as Dagbani in Ghana , the Songhoy and Tamasheq in Mali or the pandikeri in Uganda ). Its capital is not an S but is a kind of sigma Greek capital, , a large version of the lowercase letter in the alphabet Niamey International , preferable route for African languages.

These two characters are always draw in Rome as in italics , with a stick down below the line.

Computer encoding

The standard Unicode does that obviously sensitive to the long s and its derivatives.

• s (U +017 F)
  • UTF-8: 0xC5 0xBF;
  • UTF-8 octal: \ 305 \ 277;
  • decimal HTML numeric entity: s;
• F (U +1 E9B, long point suscrit used for example in the manuscripts Gaelic Ireland):
  • UTF-8: 0xE1 0x9B 0xBA;
  • UTF-8 octal: \ 341 \ 272 \ 233;
  • HTML numeric entity: F;
• ft (U + FB05; ligature of long and
  • UTF-8: 0xEF 0x85 0xac;
  • UTF-8 octal: \ 357 \ 254 \ 205;
  • HTML numeric entity: ft.

The symbol of the integral is encoded by another character:

• (U 222 B)
  • UTF-8: 0xE2 0x88 0xAB;
  • UTF-8 octal: \ 342 \ 210 \ 253;
  • decimal HTML numeric entity: .

Finally, for the esh of the international phonetic alphabet and spelling present in several African languages (see African reference alphabet ):

• (0283 U):
  • UTF-8: 0x83 0xCA;
  • UTF-8 octal: \ 312 \ 203;
  • decimal HTML numeric entity: .

The capital version is useful only African languages. By language, it may take a form similar to the tiny esh or form a sigma capitalized. Although the African reference alphabet calls the first form, second form is that shown by most of the fonts:

• (U +01 A9):
  • UTF-8: 0xC6 0xA9;
  • UTF-8 octal: \ 306 \ 251;
  • decimal HTML numeric entity: .

See also

• Alternative pop
• Scharfes S ()
• Latin alphabet
• Integral (where the long s character is still used today)

References

• Language portal
• Portal of writing

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