'' published in 1813 in
Haverhill,
Massachusetts, showing the alphabet with ligatures and double letters, including long ess (ſ) The long
s was derived from the old
Roman cursive medial s, . When the distinction between
majuscule (uppercase) and
minuscule (lowercase) letter forms became established,
toward the end of the eighth century, it developed a more vertical form. During this period, it was occasionally used at the end of a word, a practice that quickly died but that was occasionally revived in
Italian printing between about 1465 and 1480. Thus, the general rule that the long
s never occurred at the end of a word is not strictly correct, although the exceptions are rare and archaic. The double
s in the middle of a word was also written with a long
s and a short
s, as in: "Miſsiſsippi".
ſ and s as distinct letters Some old orthographic systems of Slavonic and
Baltic languages used and as two separate letters with different phonetic values. For example, the
Bohorič alphabet of the
Slovene language included , , , . In the original version of the alphabet, majuscule was shared by both letters.
Decline s database. Based on
OCR scans of books, which can misidentify the long
s as
f. In general, the long
s fell out of use in roman and italic typefaces in professional printing well before the middle of the 19th century. It rarely appears in good-quality London printing after 1800, though it lingers provincially until 1824 and is found in handwriting into the second half of the nineteenth century, and is sometimes seen later on in archaic or traditionalist printing such as printed collections of sermons.
Woodhouse's
The Principles of Analytical Calculation, published by the
Cambridge University Press in 1803, uses the long
s throughout its roman text.
Abandonment by printers and type founders , 1817, top, compared to the sixth edition of 1823; the only change (aside from the elimination of the ligature, as in "attraction") was the removal of the long s'' from the typeface. The long
s disappeared from new typefaces rapidly in the mid-1790s, and most printers who could afford to do so had discarded older typefaces by the early years of the 19th century. Pioneer of type design
John Bell (1746–1831), who started the
British Letter Foundry in 1788, is often "credited with the demise of the long
s". Paul W. Nash concluded that the change mostly happened very fast in 1800, and believes that this was triggered by the
Seditious Societies Act. To discourage subversive publications, this required printing to name the identity of the printer, and so in Nash's view gave printers an incentive to make their work look more modern. Unlike the 1755 edition, which uses the long
s throughout, the 1808 edition of the ''Printer's Grammar
describes the transition away from the use of the long s'' among type founders and printers in its list of available
sorts: An individual instance of an important work using
s instead of the long
s occurred in 1749, with
Joseph Ames's
Typographical Antiquities, about printing in England 1471–1600, but "the general abolition of long
s began with John Bell's British Theatre (1791)". • The Caslon typeface of 1796 has the short
s only. The 1823 6th edition uses the short
s. • The Caslon typeface of 1841 has the short
s only. using the long
s; Chiswick Press, run by Charles Whittingham II (nephew of
Charles Whittingham) from c. 1832–1870s, reprinted classics like
Geoffrey Chaucer's
The Canterbury Tales in a typeface of Caslon that included the long
s. • The "antiqued" first edition of
Thackeray's
The History of Henry Esmond (1852), a
historical novel set in the eighteenth century, prints long
s, and not just when doubled as in "mistreſs's". •
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge's first volume of poetry, ''Fancy's Following
, published in 1896, was printed with the long s''. • Collections of sermons were published using the long
s until the end of the 19th century. In Germany,
Fraktur-family typefaces (such as
Tannenberg, used by the
Deutsche Reichsbahn for station signage, as illustrated
above) continued in widespread official use after private use had
already largely ceased, until the
"Normal Type" decree of 1941 required that they be phased out. The long
s survives in
Fraktur typefaces.
Eventual abandonment in handwriting ), 1496, showing long and round
s (as well as an
r rotunda) in "priesters" to G. H. Lewes, 12 January 1848 After its decline and disappearance in printing in the early years of the 19th century, the long
s persisted into the second half of the century in manuscript. In handwriting used for correspondence and diaries, its use for a single
s seems to have disappeared first: most manuscript examples from the 19th century use it for the first
s in a double
s. For example, •
Charlotte Brontë used the long
s, as the first in a double
s, in some of her letters, e.g., "Miſs Austen" in a letter to the critic
G. H. Lewes, 12 January 1848; in other letters, however, she uses the short
s, for example in an 1849 letter to
Patrick Brontë, her father. Her husband
Arthur Bell Nicholls used the long
s in writing to
Ellen Nussey of Brontë's death. •
Edward Lear regularly used the long
s in his diaries in the second half of the 19th century; for example, his 1884 diary has an instance in which the first
s in a double
s is long: "Addreſsed". •
Wilkie Collins routinely used the long
s for the first in a double
s in his manuscript correspondence; for example, he used the long
s in the words "mſs" (manuscripts) and "needleſs" in a 1 June 1886 letter to Daniel S. Ford. For these as well as others, the handwritten long
s may have suggested type and a certain formality as well as the traditional. Margaret Mathewson "published" her
Sketch of 8 Months a Patient in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, A.D. 1877 of her experiences as a patient of
Joseph Lister in the
Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh by writing copies out in manuscript. In place of the first
s in a double
s, Mathewson recreated the long
s in these copies, a practice widely used for both personal and business correspondence by her family, who lived on the remote island of
Yell, Shetland. The practice of using the long
s in handwriting on Yell, as elsewhere, may have been a carryover from 18th-century printing conventions, but it was not unfamiliar as a convention in handwriting. ==Modern usage==