🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Jun28.230944.12624@beaver.cs.washington.edu> graham@june.cs.washington.edu (Stephen Graham) writes:
>In article <1991Jun27.161019.5836@d.cs.okstate.edu> norman@d.cs.okstate.edu (Norman Graham) writes:
>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.

I would agree with this.  Note that if you use the long s, you may need
extra ligatures (sh, etc.)  Also, you may want the ct and st ligatures
just to fully capture the old styles...

Giampa's wonderful implementation of Lanston Caslon Oldstyle 337 has all
these (and all the Giampa promotional materials use the st and ct
ligatures all over the place, they get very distracting when they're
used but the other old characters aren't.)  The Giampa fonts also offer
both long and short versions of descenders, lining and hanging
(old-style) digits, and other goodies even beyond that which you can get
in Adobe Expert Sets.  (Of course, they're pricey... but worth it.)

One of my favorite periods in typographical history was the German Deco
period;  my collection includes reproductions of several posters that
show the long s used in geometric sans-serif typefaces (it was even
available for Futura, originally, as were the old-style digits and other
fun things that have been discarded along the trail to DTP.)  German
Deco and Bahaus styles are responsible for a great deal of influence on
my own work.

>>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.

Ben Franklin maintained that the long s made for easier reading (in his
times, the short s was taking over), because it added more ascenders
(and descenders, for italic) to the word, making the shape of the word
less monotone.  He also didn't like the contemporary trend of not
putting a Capital at the front of every Noun, for the same Reason.

(Although he lost those battles, he was very good at picking fonts.  He
used Caslon before it was popular in America, and he was a strong
proponent of Baskerville's type when it was very first introduced--when
most other printers thought it was an abomination.  Some even maintained
it would make readers go blind.  Some very amusing correspondence
between Franklin and Baskerville exists, in which Franklin recounts
taking a specimen sheet of Caslon type to local printers and asking,
"This is Baskerville's new type, what's wrong with it?" and being told
how horrible it looked.)

99% (I imagine) of people these days, when they seey a roman long s,
will pronounce it "f" (as in Benny Hill's "Fad-Eyed Fal" ftory), just as
the thorn changed to a "y" ("Ye Olde Souvenir Shoppe").  I can see
"thistle", written with the thorn and long s, being read "piftle", etc.

An interesting point related to the long s is that in the alphabets cut
for the French royal presses, the l had the same little bump that the
long s had, meaning that s, f, l matched quite interestingly.  That's
something that was pretty much never done elsewhere; when you see an l
with a bump you can probably guess it was printed for the King.

-- 
..............................................................................
James "Kibo" Parry       kibo@world.std.com     Independent graphic designer
271 Dartmouth St. #3D, Boston, MA 02116         specializing in logo and
(617) 262-3922                                  typeface design.