http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/101/why-did-18th-century-writers-use-f-inftead-of-s
There are some of these weird letters in the Declaration of Independence, IIRC.
I noticed a typo in Cecil’s article: In the last sentence of the opening italicized question, “Was is Noah Webster…” should read “Was it Noah Webster…”
Thanks for the catch, we’ll get it fixed.
They appear in presumably all printed material from the same time; in handwriting the long s was probably truly long or at least hopefully without that stupid nub where the crossing of the f is, but printed material is as hard to read sometimes as that boustrophedon writing link that was inserted into the recent 1976 column.
The usage undoubtedly came from the Gothic Bible which used the long and final s that carried over into the German font still in use.
German has a ligature called ess-tset or s-z which looks similar to B but is really the long s with a final s jammed into it.
Actually, as the name implies, esszett (ß) is an sz ligature. However, because of changes in German spelling, “ss” is the normal substitute today. (By the way, there is now an official uppercase form of esszett, for use in all-caps; I won’t try to enter it here, since there are virtually no fonts that include it yet.)
Many alphabets have distinct final and non-final forms of letters. Greek, for example, has non-final and final lowercase sigma (σ and ς), and Hebrew has non-final and final forms of kaf (כ and ך), mem (מ and ם), nun (נ and ן), pe (פ and ף) and tsadi (צ and ץ), and Arabic beats them all with distinct initial, medial, final, and isolated forms for each letter.
In fact, now I think of it, when I was taught cursive in America in the 1950’s, I was taught that there was a special way of making final t.
It also gave less upward standing poets the opportunity to sneak double entendres past the censors. Case in point, John Donne’s “The Flea.” His long s comes conveniently at the beginning of the words “suck’d” and “sucks.” Now, despite the fact that the long s normally began and ended words, in this case, Donne only employs it to begin “sucks.” Yes, Dopers, Mr. Donne tried to convey the lustrious imagery surrouding the word “fuck” with this poem. http://www.wpdfd.com/images/donne-excerpt.gif Clever, no? Please, do read the poem. It’s quite fun.
-ME
Everything you want to know about the Esszett:
