Table of Contents
When was the letter S invented?
The long s can be traced back to Roman times, when the lowercase s typical took an elongated form in cursive writing in Latin. According to librarians at the New York Academy of Medicine, people were using the long s at the beginning and middle of words by the 12th century.
Why did f Replace S in Old English?
Why in old English text was an ‘s’ written as an ‘f’? It wasn’t; it was just written differently according to its position in the word. The f-like s (like an f without the crossbar) was a tall variant used at the start or in the middle of a word, which the modern s was used at the end or after a tall s.
When did the letter s change shape?
“Long ‘s’ fell out of use in Roman and italic typography well before the middle of the 19th century; in French the change occurred from about 1780 onwards, in English in the decades before and after 1800, and in the United States around 1820.
Why did the long s exist?
The origins of the long s, ſ, can be traced all the way back to old Roman cursive, a script used in Rome for everyday, informal writing from the first century AD to about the third century. It’s just that it was used as the uppercase S, mostly, up until the eleventh or twelfth century.
Who created the letter S?
The alphabet was made up of 22 letters, all of the consonants. In 750 BC, the Greeks added vowels to the Phoenician alphabet and the combination was regarded as the initial true alphabet. This was seized by the Latins (Romans) and combined with some Etruscan characters such as the letter S and F.
What is s in cursive?
The lowercase cursive s is less recognizable if you’re not familiar with cursive. It almost looks like a little sail, with a line extending up and to the right to connect to the next letter. Because cursive is meant to be written faster than print, understanding how the letters connect can help you be a faster writer!
When did English stop using long s?
The long s disappeared from new typefaces rapidly in the mid-1790s, and most printers who could afford to do so had discarded older typefaces by the early years of the 19th century.
What number does the letter S represent?
Letters in the alphabet:
| Letter Number | Letter |
|---|---|
| 16 | P |
| 17 | Q |
| 18 | R |
| 19 | S |
Can Z be silent?
Even unusual letters like Z and J are silent in words that we have adopted from foreign languages, such as marijuana (originally a Spanish word) and laissez-faire (French).