QuilotoaHow far back in time can you understand English? This site goes back by centuries allowing you to test yourself.
This was fun! Anyone know about the ſ character? How come in the 1600s it only sometimes seemed to take the place of s?
5ibelius9insterbergSome of the rules for the use of the long s from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s
Long s was always used (ſong, ſubſtitute), except:
- Upper-case letters are always the round S; there is no upper-case long s.
- A round s was always used at the end of a word ending with ⟨s⟩: his, complains, ſucceſs
- However, long s was maintained in abbreviations such as ſ. for ſubſtantive(substantive), and Geneſ. for Geneſis(Genesis).
- Before an apostrophe (indicating an omitted letter), a round s was used: us’d and clos’d.
- Before or after an f, a round s was used: offset, ſatisfaction.
