s → ſ
I recently received an email from an anonymous reader aſking if i had any ſort of programme i uſed to inſert the long S (ſ) into texts. Uſually, i inſert theſe manually, but on pages like The Garden and “What i believe”, i include a ſmall programmatic widget allowing a reader to toggle between long and ſhort S-es as they chooſe. I thought i might preſent a more uſer-friendly verſion here: juſt inſert your ſ-leſs text into the box below and it will ſpit out an equivalent in either my houſe ſtyle or a ſtyle more authentic to its uſage in 17 th-century Engliſh. (For information about the differences between the two, ſee the footer.)
My houſe ſtyle tends to take more after works publiſhed in the 18th and 19th centuries, in the tail end of the long S’s faſhionability, than works in the 17th century and earlier, to which the anonymous emailer’s requeſt pertained. In particular:
- I write ſk where 17th-century works would write sk: aſking ſkeletons versus asking skeletons .
- I write ſb where 17th-century works would write sb: leſbians’ ex-huſbands versus lesbians’ ex-husbands .
- I write ſs word-medially where 17th-century works would write ſſ: aſseſs leſsons versus aſſeſs leſſons .
For more detail, ſee this poſt on babelstone.co.uk.
Hello!
I’ve been studying German and I’d like to share something interesting. In German the long s pretty much remained in common use in blackletter typefaces (Fraktur, Schwabacher, etc.) until the use of blackletter fonts were banned in 1941, and never made a resurgence ever since. Though there still exist a few organizations today that still promote the use of blackletter in German (including the long s). The long s was also ocassionally used in Roman typefaces (Antiqua), though the general convention was that blackletter typefaces use both the long and short s while Roman typefaces only use the short s. Some interesting exceptions exist, such as the East German Duden and Mackensen’s dictionary which both use the long s in Antiqua as recently as 1953 and 1968! The geometric sans-serif Futura also included a design for the long s, though I’ve never seen it actually utilized.