Talk:Long s

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There's one rule that was never added yet

Two common ligatures: fi and fl

the rule was before a J, use a short S (misjudge, disjoint) Source:https://imgur.com/gallery/of-long-short-s-0sVAa New Ruble account (talk) 10:09, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

from English. New Ruble account (talk) 10:11, 24 June 2025 (UTC)
"The reaſon for this rule is that the aſcender of ſ and the tittle on j would collide and break the type, or create a large ſpace between the letters where they bear off each other." - Alice New Ruble account (talk) 10:16, 24 June 2025 (UTC)
You'd think the ſame principle would forbid ſi. —Tamfang (talk) 20:16, 24 June 2025 (UTC)
Perhaps the alleged rule was meant to apply to both j and i, which were not consistently distinguished until long ſ went out of fashion. —Tamfang (talk) 20:44, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

More fundamentally, the source you provide does not appear to have any credible status. The only existence of "A simple explanation of the correct usage of long and short s" is that posting on Imgur. Consequently, it fails our WP:self published source test. It gives no evidence for the basis of its claims (if it did, you could refer back to those). It is unusable on Wikipedia. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:26, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

Furthermore, the author is clearly out of their depth. This "issue" is well-known in typography and is resolved using a ligature (such as for the f i pair. I have prepended a larger image). --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:00, 24 June 2025 (UTC)
here's more actual sources with REAL books https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Dictionary_Of_The_English_Language/kyRWAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=misjudge&pg=PP155&printsec=frontcover
https://books.google.com/books?id=cLRy062A460C&pg=PT495
https://books.google.com/books?id=gt9YlDk8E5IC&pg=PA116
https://books.google.com/books?id=Mq82AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA221&dq=misjudge#v=onepage&q=misjudge&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=YqbH9AWfC10C&pg=PA19&dq=misjudge#v=onepage&q=misjudge&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=PFNgAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA17&dq=misjudge#v=onepage&q=misjudge&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=PSxkAAAAcAAJ&pg=PP12 so it was actually a rule. New Ruble account (talk) 09:17, 25 June 2025 (UTC)
You infer that there was a rule because you observe that ſi (e.g., miſinform) is set using a ligature that merges the hood and the title but ſj is not. Two explanations: (a) there was such a rule (b) the type foundry routinely supplied a ligaure sort (typesetting) for the (common) ſi pair but not for the rare ſj pair: as I said, the technology existed so if there had been a hard and fast rule sufficient demand, the type founders would have created another ligature sort.
But all that is just so much conjecture on my part too  and that is an example of what we call "original research". Wikipedia is not a publisher of original research. We would need a reliable source that declares that such a rule existed before we could include it. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:27, 25 June 2025 (UTC) revised --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:43, 26 June 2025 (UTC)
Another conjecture is that it is an artefact of print technology. Compare English articles: Ye form, where English printers substituted a y for a thorn (letter) because the Dutch types they imported didn't have that letter. So an academic researcher would have to examine pre-printing manuscripts to see how the pair were handled then. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 14:47, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

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