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From: graham@june.cs.washington.edu (Stephen Graham)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Re: The use of long s in modern English typesetting
Message-ID: <1991Jun28.230944.12624@beaver.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 28 Jun 91 23:09:44 GMT
References: <1991Jun27.161019.5836@d.cs.okstate.edu>
Sender: news@beaver.cs.washington.edu (USENET News System)
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
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In article <1991Jun27.161019.5836@d.cs.okstate.edu> norman@d.cs.okstate.edu (Norman Graham) writes:

I suspect that the two different settings of circumstance were intended
to show off the long-s ligature and the short-s ligature.

>I hope someone on the net will take the time to explain long s usage to me.
>I promise to post a summary of the responses.

I can't pretend to be authoratative, but... The long-s should be used when
the letter s occurs within a word, except when two or more s's appear
in a row, such as asset. In this case, the first s should be a long s,
and the second a short s. Incidentally, this is the origin of the
German eszet. Short s should always be used as the last character in
a word. As for the first character, I've seen both long and short variants
used. I would tend to use the short variant as being more distinctive.

>Overall, I find sample copy difficult to read. The roman long s looks too
>much like an 'f' to my eyes. I suspect most readers will agree. Is it 
>possible to make long s part of our culture's visual vocabulary again?

It probably won't make it back, simply because it looks too similar to
an f. The only time I've used it was deliberately copying an 18th-
century look. However, I wouldn't mind seeing thorn return to common
usage.

-- 

Stephen Graham
graham@cs.washington.edu
(206) 543-8115