Long s

[Joel S. Berson]

At 8/11/2010 10:52 AM, George Thompson wrote:
>Even the dimmest-witted OCR should know the difference, because in a
>"f" (in type, anyway) the little cross-piece appears on both sides
>of the upright, whereas in the "long s" it sticks out only from the right side.

With early 18th-century types and ink and smudged, faded, etc.
originals, it's difficult for even humans to distinguish.  (Whether
or not the crossbar actually is present on the left side of the
vertical can be mysterious.)  And humans can use context and our
knowledge of what are not real words.

>I dimly recall that the "long s" is only used in certain
>environments and never in others.  It seems never to appear at the
>end of a word, for instance (never "catf and dogf".)  When 2 "s"s
>appear in the middle of the word, I believe the first will be a
>"long s", the second a standard s (for instance, "tofsed").

True.  Elsewhere the long s appears.

>Most of my reading is in the post-"long s" era; Joel should have a
>better sense of these patterns.

I have been surprised to see the long s persisting in some printed
books from the first half of the 19th century.

Joel

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