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When I was about 10, my dad had a visit from a John Hancock Insurance agent, which netted my brother and I each a blue tube containing a parchment facsimile of the declaration of independence. Once or twice I tried to read it, but the cursive script was very challenging and I kept getting hung up on odd words like "Happinefs". Recently, as I looked over a jpeg of its text both in cursive and typeset, I noticed in one, the word is rendered "pursuit" while the other shows "purfuit", so I got to wondering. Was there ever any rule or aesthetic to guide the writer or typesetter in choosing between "f" and "s"? When I look at the text, the choice appears to be random, with no particular lean toward color balance or textual clarity. Anyone have any insight on this?
They don't use an "f" at all. This is a "long s" usually used in the middle of words. The "short s" is used at the end of a word. If you find an actual "f", compare the two and you will see some difference.
Here is a wikipedia article about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s
The cursive form as seen in the long-hand version of the Declaration is clearly differentiated from "f" in that the descender sweeps clockwise for the long s as opposed to a counter-clockwise sweep for the f. But in the typeset version, apparently set on July 4th (I think the long-hand sheet may have been written out a day or two earlier, prior to signing), the long s is almost indistinguishable from lower-case f. See this image:
http://www.learnnc.org/lp/multimedia/7884
But my question pertains to how a writer decides to use it. In the typeset version, words like "affent", "thefe" and "purfuit" appear where they are mostly not seen in the long-hand version (it has "asfent", but no words with a double long s). Sometimes one sees "fhould", other times "should". I was just trying to find out if there was ever any sort of style guide, because its appearance seems to have been arbitrary and random.
I've always assumed (there I go again) that the different form of the 's' was in the process of dying out, at about that time; so that some people used it carefully, some casually, and some not at all. I can't prove that, or at least I don't care enough to go out and find evidence to support it, so maybe that's no use to you. But then, the fact that you observed just that inconsistent use seems to point in that direction. It does to me, anyway.
(The same thing is happening to the subjunctive today, and has been for a century or so. Maybe longer. I doubt it'll ever go away entirely, and it may be that it can make a comeback. But I'm not holding my breath.)
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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