Talk:Long s/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Wikipedia Editing

How doeſ thiſ relate to Wikipedia editing practiceſ? I would like to enter a quote from an old ſource which containſ numerouſ medial "s" characterſ. ſhould I uſe an "ſ" character or the ſhort "s"? If ſo, how can I be ſure that uſerſ will be able to ſee the "ſ" character rather than an "s"? I can ſee the "ſ" character when typing thiſ edit, but not when viewing the preſented page. It juſt appearſ aſ a box. I am uſing Windowſ 98 ſE and IE 6.0. I underſtand that the medial "s" iſ repreſented in Unicode by the ſign U+017F, and may be repreſented in HTML aſ ſ (hex) or ſ (decimal). Could I uſe unicode or HTML when editing Wikipedia to maximize viewability? What if the ſource document containſ two conſecutive medial "s" characterſ? I realize that may not be conſidered correct, but tranſcription integrity ſuggeſtſ that I tranſcribe aſ written. 71.79.235.131 (talk) 00:27, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Use the s. The ſ/s split does not as a general rule carry information, and modern transcription almost invariably uses just the s, even in scholarly sources.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:03, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

You can uſe it if you want; worſt comes to worſt, ſomeone will change it. If nothing elſe, the "more true" verſion will remain in hiſtory. 68.39.174.238 (talk) 05:13, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

A word of advice : we don't uſe the long s at the end of a word. Jeſs Cully (talk) 14:26, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

ſpeaking of which, early in the article, the phraſe "thus the statement later in this article that the long 's' "never occurred at the end of a word" is not strictly correct, although the exceptions are too rare and archaic to invalidate the point made there." is made, and as noted in that ſtatement, later in the article it ſays "... which is highly inaccurate, to say the least, considering long s never occurred at the end of a word; only either at the beginning or in the middle." To me, that ſeems rather unprofeſsional. The article probably shouldn't contradict itſelf and probably shouldn't acknowledge that it's doing ſo either. -Shortspecialbus (talk) 01:53, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I found it amusing that someone even considered, but then also implemented, a reference in the article to something that was written later in the same article. -- Sverdrup (talk) 20:55, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The long s is called the "medial s" because it is situated in the middle of a word, in other words, it is not situated at the end of a word.Lestrade (talk) 02:26, 10 March 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Last usage in the USA

Is there any ſource for the laſt ſerious and conſiſtent uſe of "ſ" in Engliſh in the United States? The article ſays that it fell out of favor after about 1820, but right now I'm ſcanning the minutes of the Seſsion (the governing board) of a church in Pittſburgh, which as late as 6 October 1888 ſpeaks of the Seſsion holding its meetings in the Seſsion meeting room of the church: the Seſsion clerk (the ſecretary) conſiſtently ſpells it "Seſsion" but always writes of everything else using the letters that are commonly used today: for example, the phraſe "Seſsion met at the call of the Moderator [the board preſident, here the church paſtor] and was by him constituted with prayer", written in this exact ſtyle, occurs at the beginning of each meeting for many years' worth of minutes. Is this perhaps juſt a bored clerk with nothing elſe to do? Nyttend (talk) 04:02, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Probably ſome ſtubborn old fool who waſn't about to give up the old way of doing things. That would be the only example I've ever ſeen of real long-s at anywhere near that late of date.--Prosfilaes (talk) 06:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

It muſt be ſome traditional thing: as I'm working with minutes of Seſsions for churches in this denomination, many ſeſsion clerks nationwide uſe it (into the 1890s!), and characteriſtically not uſing except for "Seſsion". This denomination, well into the 20th century, was ſtrongly driven by tradition (bring in Tevye!), even when (in things like this) it had absolutely nothing to do with its doctrine. Nyttend (talk) 13:26, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

It seems that in America at least, even long after long s had fallen out of favour in printing, it was common to use ſs for double s (but short s in all other positions) in handwriting. So in American printed books from the late 19th and early 20th century that reproduce what were originally handwritten records you can often see words such as seſsion. You can see this phenomenon right up to the present day; for example Grant Foreman's Pioneer Days in the Early Southwest (1994) faithfully quotes an 1841 (originally handwritten) letter from Montfort Stokes that uses claſs, Commiſsion, trespaſsed, Congreſs, seſsion, etc., but uses short s in all other positions. BabelStone (talk) 14:22, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

In fact you can see this phenomenon in the 1791 manuscript of the United States Bill of Rights that is shown at the top of the Long s page, where long s is only used before a short s (e.g. Congreſs, expreſsed, aſsembled, leſs, proceſs, etc.). BabelStone (talk) 09:21, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I can atteſt to that as well, having seen an engraved mirror with a didication to "Miſs (someone), with best wishes". I think it survived in that usage as a way of being extremely formal, the way diploma font is used to suggest ancient education when people wrote with angled pens, etc. 68.39.174.238 (talk) 01:59, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

If anybody will provide a citation for these instances of late use of the long s in the Pittsburth Session minutes, we can include the example in the article. I have citations for a number of instances in the U.K.Scogdill (talk) 23:01, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Modern Usage

Can we please not add any more silly examples of the 'Fad-Eyed Fal' type to the Modern Usage section. This section is already far too long when compared with the rather minimal information about historic usage. Also, do we really need paragraphs on the integral sign and the phonetic esh letter -- surely it is sufficient to have them referenced in the 'See also' section. BabelStone (talk) 11:46, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the 'See also' section is almost always a bad idea; it gives no context to why these articles are being linked to. I see nothing wrong with the sentences on the integral sign and esh as they stand currently.--Prosfilaes (talk) 13:42, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, then how about moving them to a new section entitled something like 'Derived characters', as the integral sign at least is not that modern. BabelStone (talk) 14:13, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

The easiest thing to do is to remove "Fad-eyed Fal" and her illiterate compatriots. They add nothing to the article and detract from its encyclopedic tone. It is sufficient to note that the potential confusion is exploited by humorists; the rest is trivia.RandomCritic (talk) 20:17, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

The rule in writing is show, don't tell. Vivid writing uses examples, not just flat out statements. That adds a lot to the article.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:16, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia, not a popular magazine. The rule here is to be brief and direct and to omit anything that doesn't contribute to the primary subject matter. A long collection of examples of s>f "humour" is trivia, and strays from the actual topic.RandomCritic (talk) 11:47, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

The fact that this is a encyclopedia doesn't mean we should try to be dull and unreadable. And this differs from even the current practice in the article; note that every one of the four paragraphs above that paragraph mentions names and examples. Why do you say that it's "the first sound in the English word shun"? That's an example, not brief or direct. I'm not asking for a long collection of examples; that's a straw-man. But there should be at least one example there.--Prosfilaes (talk) 13:25, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Prosfilaes that a single example would be useful, and would help readers understand what the bare statement "... based on the intentional misreading of s as f" actually means. I would favour the Vicar of Dibley example as it is so funny (but maybe that is cultural). At any rate, definitely not one of the examples with capital F such as "Fad-Eyed Fal" as that makes no sense (how can you read "Sad-Eyed Sal" as "Fad-Eyed Fal" ?). BabelStone (talk) 11:05, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Restored one example. I hope it doesn't attract others, though. RandomCritic (talk) 00:36, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

It obviously does attract more examples, but no matter, we'll just keep reverting them. BabelStone (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 21:08, 19 October 2008 (UTC).

Italics

The italicized form of ſ always appears, at leaſt on my browſer, without a deſcender, i.e., ſimply a non-italic ſ with a ſlant, thus: ſ, as in ſuperſeſſion.

I have never, however, ſeen this form in actual printed texts which uſe both long ſ and italics, from the 16th to 19th centuries. There it is always ʃ with a deſcender, identical to the "eſh" IPA ſign: e.g. non-italic ſuperſeſſion, italic ʃuperʃeʃʃion.

Is there any way to get the appearance of the italic form of long ſ correct, or is this baſically an inſoluble problem? RandomCritic (talk) 19:36, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

This is purely a font issue. Most italic serif fonts that support long s do correctly have the form with a descending tail, some with a knob (e.g. Cambria), but most without (e.g. Times New Roman). On my system the italic versions of the following fonts all have a long-tailed ſ : Aboriginal Serif, Book Antiqua, Bookman Old Style, Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Caslon, Century Schoolbook, Charis SIL, Consolas, Constantia, Corbel, DejaVu Serif, Garamond, Gentium, Georgia, Junicode, Minion Pro, Monotype Corsiva, Palatino Linotype, and Times New Roman. But sans serif fonts such as Arial generally just have a slanting form of the long s, which is why the italic forms of words with long s do not look nice here on Wikipedia (does anyone know if there is any way of specifying a serif typeface using Wiki markup?). BabelStone (talk) 10:46, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

alſo Hoefler Text, Linux Libertine. (Argh, now I find that none of my blackletter fonts have 'ſ'!) —Tamfang (talk) 00:19, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Blackletter

I notice in several places that the article switches case when referring to Blackletter scripts. A quick read of the Blackletter article suggests it should be a proper capital. I'll go through and standardize this article if there is no objection... //Blaxthos ( t / c ) 22:05, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, personally I tend to write "blackletter" with lower case initial, like italic and roman, but consistency between articles is important. However, looking at the Blackletter article, it has 19 instances of "Blackletter" (including some sentence initial occurences) and 34 instances of "blackletter", so it is not clear which form is prefered in that article. I suggest you try to standardize the Blackletter article first, and then change this article to use the form agreed upon for Blackletter. BabelStone (talk) 09:02, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Historical Usage Graph

I find the new diagram interesting, but too flawed to use in the article. Everything it says that isn't already said in the article is questionable. Google's data has two problems; first, there's quite a bit of misdated material in Google's corpus. More importantly, laſt is frequently OCRed as last by Google; do the n-gram and check out the hits for last in the 1700-1720 period, they're all laſt or mis-dated material. This graph gives the incorrect impression that there was some usage of "last" in the early 18th century, when that usage is just problems with the data.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:15, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

It is an interesting diagram, but it looks too much like original research, and it is problematic to provide raw data without being able to back it up with references to reliable sources that discuss and analyse the source data. BabelStone (talk) 01:32, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

There's an element of original research, of course, but I'd argue that my diagram is essentially a graphical representation of Google's published data that anybody could easily check. As for the OCR issues, I've detailed them in the text accompanying the diagram commons:file:Historical_usage_of_long_s.svg (which hasn't been picked up by its English Wikipedia copy, at the time of writing). Part of the reason that I inserted the diagram was that the crossover was very marked and clear, and smoothe enough to indicate that multiple documents were contributing to the result, giving a high degree of confidence in the accuracy of the result. And yet it didn't really match the dates given for Britain and America in the text a few days back, but now I see that it does, which is interesting -- see the text before and after the edits by Potosino on 24th and 25th December.--Farry (talk) 18:48, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

It is a graphical representation of Google's data, and I would be less adverse to it if we were showing the proportion of laft and last in English. But using it for long-s has all sort of research questions; the OCR problems, the question of whether last is the appropriate word here, etc. It's non-trivial OR.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:53, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Note that it's an illustration. Photographs in Wikipedia are usually original work but are readily accepted. Diagrams seem to have a similar dispensation: Commons:Category:Diagrams. --Farry (talk) 11:58, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

There's a difference between original work and original research. This is doing a sample of one piece of data, doing your own noise processing and concluding it means something entirely orthogonal to what it says on the tin (no matter how justified that may be). That's original research.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:24, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll note that on my Wikimedia-Commons talk page, that in May 2011, somebody added a Barnstar, which according to the edit summary was for the long-s diagram, and in April 2012, somebody added a "thanks - very interesting" for it. So that's two people that found it useful enough to comment on my talk page, which I believe is somewhat unusual for diagrams. Also, I see that somebody included it in the French version of this article, with a French translation of the comment text. Nearly all diagrams here on Wikipedia have elements of original research, due to Wikipedia preferring original work for illustrations and diagrams (unlike the textual information) because of the licensing issues. --Farry (talk) 09:07, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Which doesn't negate the fact that it's wrong. The label of the image is not what the image is of, and what the image is of is highly unprocessed data, of one word. It's like sticking an image on global warming that shows the temperature readings from one source known to have serious data problems.--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:03, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

The crossover point on the graph is the important thing, and that is clear-cut and unambiguous, and that's really all that shows up in the small-size diagram as shown in the article. If somebody wants to look at the diagram in detail, then its page details all the issues. It's not "wrong". I agree with the general principles of the Wikipedia rules for verifiability, and try to keep to them, and although I concede that I might be biassed as the creator of this diagram, it does seem to me that this diagram is a positive contribution. and there's evidence that three others agree.--Farry (talk) 15:10, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

I see you've deleted it a third time now. Well, I'm too close to this to be unbiassed. I'd have let it go by now were it not for others saying that they liked it, making me a bit concerned about the loss of something that others find useful. I'll see if Wikipedia has arbitration available to say yes or no.--Farry (talk) 20:35, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

I've asked for an assessment at the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard.--Farry (talk) 10:47, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

A permanent link the Noticeboard discussion: Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard/Archive_50#Talk:Long_s.23Historical_Usage_Graph.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:53, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Clarification needed

Sorry to have to break the olde Renaiſsance Faire-style reverie and return to Earth with an encylopædia issue...

(In the ¶'s below, I use terminology as defined on Adobe's website [1])

Sub "History", the final phrase in the second paragraph is rather ambiguous.

In "not possible with the other typeforms mentioned without kerning", does "without kerning" mean (1) "unless they are kerned", or (2) by is it referring to specific 'typeforms' (faces or families?), any of which may not be possessed of kerning? Is it talking of physical, "hot metal" fonts, or of computer fonts?

I find it less than useful even to bring a typesetting-specific concept—kerning—into this part of the exposition of the letterform because kerning is implementation-specific: the availability and usefulness of kerning is not only font specific, but specific to unique implementations, versions, and formats (physical or computer [ttf, otf (pfb outlines), otf (ttf outlines), pfb, sfnt, fon, snf, pcf, etc. ad nauseum]) of those individual fonts.

Indeed, saying that long-s glyphs in italic fonts don't have the left-hand "nub" is not currently correct: the Palatino Linotype Italic and Bold Italic fonts do have a left-hand "nub", whether kerning is involved or not. (This is also the case with both the historic Bodoni and Didot Italic and Bold Italic faces digitized into TTF's by the Greek Font Society [2]. Such an all-encompassing exclusive statement requires supporting documentation.

I also question this statement technically, as this suggests that the act of kerning substitutes glyphs (one with, for one without a "nub") from within (computer) fonts, something that it simply doesn't do. Kerning moves existing glyphs per x- and y-offsets as defined in kerning pairs (in old TTF, in the "kern" table; in OTF, possibly using the GPOS table's data instead); it does no glyph substitution (info found in OTF's GSUB table).

--Polemyx (talk) 18:14, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Kerning is the ability to change the width between letters, depending on which letters are involved. A proper italic long s would need to be kerned so that it actually overlaps the previous character. Doing this is not possible with movable type, and could not be done automatically (if at all) in older computer fonts. Even proportional width typewriters didn't have the ability to move the stamp backwards so it would properly overlap. — trlkly 12:46, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Long forgotten by all but antiquarians?

As of the 11th of June 2013, the article reads the following:

Another survival of the long s was the abbreviation used in British English for shilling, as in "5∕–", where the shilling mark "∕" stood in for the long s which had been long forgotten by all but antiquarians.

Speaking as one who grew up when the currency was still £sd, we were all taught at school that ‘ ∕ ’ stood for the long-s. That was in Hants. in the '50s, i.e. the 1950s, not the 1850s … and in point of fact, the ‘ s ’, whether long or round — as in the alternate form of writing ‘ 5s. ’ for five shillings — stood for the Latin ‘solidus’, not shilling(s).

Although decimalisation was not to come for another twenty years, modernisation saw the double stroke in the Pound (Sterling) sign ‘₤’ give way to the more simplified ‘£’, just as the double hyphen for naught, still written by many in the 1950s as ‘ 5∕゠ ’ or ‘ 5∕⸗ ’, gave way to a single hyphen as in the example cited above, ‘ 5∕- ’. So too, in time, a triangular wedge, that looked similar to an acute accent, was used to express shillings, for instance as when writing ‘ 2´6 ’ for ‘ 2/6 ’. However, this was still recognised as an adaptation of the long-s shilling mark.

See shilling, with its statements regarding the shilling mark and the long-s, given as common knowledge … and not arcane, or esoteric to all but an antiquarian.

—Christian Gregory (talk) 03:36, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Risks in reCAPTCHA

There can be some humorous examples of the Long S creating some inadvertent mischief with reCAPTCHA - There is an example here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ambanmba (talk • contribs) 12:54, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Wow

Thiſ ſucks! Thiſ article needſ more information!

The character is actually "ſ", not "f". Double ſharp (talk) 16:54, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Firſt statement corrected. It was driving me nutſ!!

Decline in Use

A discussion on the listserv for Victorianists has led me to revise part of this article, and I'm writing here to let you know I'm about to make a pretty big change in this article. Mostly, I'm expanding the section on the times when the long s fell out of use, with examples culled from that discussion. I'm a Victorianist, not a specialist in type, and so will appreciate any help you can give in making this article more useful to people attempting to date documents that use the long s, either in type or manuscript. I'm thinking of adding a subsection in the "History" section called "Decline in Use."

Also, I'm wondering about citing that listserv discussion. I have a number of references to primary and secondary sources, as usual, but the listserv discussion has been archived. It will be messy to cite those postings, because some of the sentences will have both a footnote- and bibliography-type reference as well as this citation to the listserv discussion. But Victoria is a listserv made up of scholars in the field, and so i can also imagine an argument for citing those postings.

I'll be grateful for any suggestions and help! 20:36, 31 January 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scogdill (talk • contribs)

I can't help you much but please do add that information. I find it really puzzling that this letter form had been used for centuries, only to then die out in a matter of two decades. Was there some event that triggered this? --Mudd1 (talk) 13:59, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Maybe after seeing some ſ-less text in print for the first time, people were surprised at how much easier it was to read? Just a guess though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.114.146.117 (talk) 12:58, 8 July 2016 (UTC)