Okay, geoff:

In the early days of printing, typefounders tried to imitate the
usages of handwriting. A typical font of type would contain a number
of ligatures and other characters that do not exist in today's type.
One of the most confounding is the long "s" that resembles the 'f"
character. If you'll look closely, the crossbar on the long "s" is
either absent or found only on one side of the upright. There was
also a character for "per" that was used in accounting, much as the @
is used for "at" in pricing.



At 9:57 AM -0500 12/10/03, geoff carver wrote:
>I think ned heite should jump in here & explain to you why not only american
>but also british & german and french and other languages using "latin"
>characters put in "f"s in place of SOME "s"s in their texts


So the correct transcription of the long "s" is a short "s" in
today's type, unless you happen to have an antique font. I have some
in the basement, but none on the computer.

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