In most works printed before about 1800 two forms of the lower-case s were used. One was the s that is still in use today; the other was the long s, a character which looks like f without the right-hand part of its crossbar. The italic form of long s usually lacks the ‘crossbar’ altogether. (The image above is a detail of the showing of Pica No. 2 in William Caslon, Specimen of Printing Types, London, 1766.)

The present form of the minuscule s (called ‘short s’ here for convenience) resembles the capital letter S in Roman inscriptions. The long s originates in the straggling form given to this letter in Roman cursive script.

In the late Roman cursive of the fourth century the letter had already acquired the shape that it kept when it was was adopted in more formal hands, such as the ‘half uncial’ of the sixth century and other minuscule hands of the middle ages, including the Carolingian script. (The example above, a letter written on papyrus in about 400, reads …sam uilissima…) The inscriptional S was used in uncial scripts, and in capital letters for headings and initials. Some minuscule scripts used both the long and the short s: the script of the Lindisfarne Gospels, written in Northumbria in the ‘insular’ form of half uncial in about 698, is an example. (Is there any rule that governs this early use of two forms of s?) The Carolingian script of the ninth century used only long s, but in late Carolingian or early gothic scripts from the twelfth century onwards, the convention was adopted of using long s at the beginning and in the middle of words, and short s at the end.

The first types were based on gothic hands, and the early printers followed the established use of long s and short s. However the first writers of the humanistic script, which was based on the Carolingian hand, had followed its convention of using only long s thoughout. Some printers who began to use types influenced by the humanistic script (Sweynheym and Pannartz, Subiaco, 1465, for example, and Ulric Gering, Paris, 1470) did the same, but they soon reverted to the ‘gothic’ use of initial and medial long and final short s, and this became the almost universal rule in printing until the end of the eighteenth century. Because long s was kerned and overlapped adjacent characters, the short s was sometimes used as an expedient in front of the tall letters with which the long s would have collided. Special ligatured types were eventually made for many of the combinations, such as (for printing English) sb, sh, si, sk, sl, ss, st, ssi, ssl.

Like the printers, writers of the formal humanistic script in the later fifteenth century generally reverted to initial and medial long s and final short s. But writers of the cursive form of the script and the hands that developed from it (chancery cursive and the later ‘Italian’ hands) often made no use at all of long s, and the relaxed and inconsistent usage of calligraphers is strikingly different from the rigid practice observed by printers. Examples of initial and medial short s can be found towards the end of the fifteenth century in the work of Bartolomeo Sanvito, and perhaps a significant figure in this context (as in many others) is the reforming sixteenth-century calligrapher and teacher Giovan Francesco Cresci in Rome who, unlike earlier writers of the cancellaresca corsiva, including his arch-rival Giovanni Battista Palatino, made little use of long s in his own manuscripts and writing books. His new style, adopted by his pupils and followers, changed the look of Western handwriting.

From the fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries there are very few exceptions in printed texts to the rule that the initial and medial s was long and the final s was short. One of the exceptions is seen in the series of works printed at Vicenza in the 1520s for the Italian linguistic reformer Gian Giorgio Trissino, in which short and long s are used to distinguish the voiced and unvoiced consonant. The same distinction between short and long s, an idea perhaps derived from Trissino, was made by Edward Capell in his Prolusions, or select pieces of antient poetry, printed in London by Dryden Leach and published in 1760, and in his edition of Shakespeare (1768, etc.). Pierre Moreau, Paris, who printed in the 1640s with types based on a current version of the Italian cursive hand, followed the practice of contemporary calligraphers and used only short s. The long s was not used in Joseph Ames, Typographical Antiquities (London, 1749), nor in the Virgil of 1758 printed by Robert and Andrew Foulis of Glasgow and a few of their other titles. Examples of printing without long s are also found in Spain during the late 18th century, the earliest example so far identified being Tomas Lopez, Descripción de la Provincia de Madrid (Madrid: Joaquín Ibarra, 1763). Other examples include Andres Xímenez, Descripción del … Escorial (Madrid: Antonio Marín, 1764), the type specimen of Antonio Espinosa (Madrid, 1771) and Ibarra’s Sallust (Madrid, 1772). See D. B. Updike, Printing types, 2nd ed. (1937), figs. 233–44. There seems to be no printed explanation by any of these printers why they did this, but it seems likely that these eighteenth-century examples in Britain and Spain represent the beginning of a revolt against the irrational use of two different forms for one letter, which meant that as well as the long s itself the printer had to find room in the case for its many ligatured sorts as well as the inevitable five for f.

The general discarding of the long s by printers is probably due to François-Ambroise Didot, Paris, who in about 1781 initiated the cutting of the new style of type that later became known in English as ‘modern face’. Long s was not included in the new types, and Didot’s example was quickly followed by other printers under his influence. One of these was John Bell, printer and typefounder in London, to whom the movement for its disuse is sometimes mistakenly attributed. Bell did not use long s in his newspaper The World, first published on 1 January 1787, nor in the text of the specimen of the new types cut for his British Letter-Foundry by Richard Austin (1788), although the synopsis of the fount shows that long s and its combinations were made for it. Bell was familiar with contemporary French books, which he imported into England, and he had made use of a small size of one of the types cut by Firmin, son of François-Ambroise Didot.

In the ‘Prolegomena’ to his Shakspeare (1788) Bell explained that his objects in omitting long s were to give the lines ‘the effect of being more open’ (an aim of many printers of the late 18th century, when texts were commonly leaded) and to avoid the confusion of long s with f.

When typefounders in Britain introduced ‘modern-cut’ types during the decade from 1795 to 1805, long s was often not supplied in the fount, and as these new types were bought by printers its general use quickly declined. It was revived for a time for the sake of its antiquarian flavour by printers like Charles Whittingham and Louis Perrin when old face types were again used for printing towards the middle of the nineteenth century, but the long s never returned in everyday printing with roman types.

Long s and its combinations are still used when German is set correctly in gothic types like Schwabacher and Fraktur. The character ß, a ligature which is known as Eszett (or some such spelling) since it is essentially based on sz, is still used when the German language is set in roman type, except in Switzerland, where it has disappeared. Some attempt is made to give its history, some models for its design and the rules for its use in the post that follows. Recent changes to German orthography have modified the rules and reduced the occasions for its use.

Several other scripts, notably Arabic and Hebrew, have differing initial, medial and final forms for many letters. Greek retains two forms of sigma, one for initial and medial and one for final use, but the existence of the two forms seems completely unconnected with the duplication of s in the Latin script.

This text was written years ago for giving out in classes, and it has occasionally been printed. I am adding a revised version of it to this blog because it still seems to give rather more historical information about the use of long s by printers and professional calligraphers than can easily be found. However for some more discussion see also Rules for long s and The Long and Short of the Letter S.

Long into the 19th century it was still common practice in English handwriting to use long and short s for double s, notably in ‘Miss’ in the address on letters. William Bulmer’s grand folio Shakspeare [sic], 1792, and Milton, 1794, were a British rejoinder to the austere magnificence of the books printed by Pierre Didot with the types of Firmin. They display a certain conservatism. The forms of the types are almost closer to those of Baskerville, cut forty years earlier, than to those of the Didots. The warmly-tinted Whatman wove paper avoids the icy whiteness of the French papers. And although the long s was generally omitted in the text, it was retained – as in handwriting – for the combination ss: