Why the letter 's' used to look like an 'f' in old English books

Countries & Cities · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: You might have noticed an odd, f-like character in historical texts that seems to replace the letter s. This is the long s, an archaic lowercase form that dominated English printing for centuries. It followed strict, complex rules before vanishing from English usage by the early 19th century.

The long s, written as ſ, emerged in the 8th century and served as a common lowercase variant for the letter s. Unlike the modern round s—often called the terminal or short s—the long s was typically restricted to the beginning or middle of words. Printers and writers followed specific conventions to determine when to use each form, with the round s almost always reserved for the end of a word or as a terminal character in specific sequences.

By the 17th and 18th centuries, these rules became highly nuanced. For instance, while a double s mid-word would often be written as ſs or ſſ, a round s was required if the word ended in s. Authors like Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Swift utilized these conventions in their 18th-century works, such as the 1755 Dictionary of the English Language or the 1711 A Tale of a Tub. In some typefaces, the long s is easily confused with the letter f, distinguished only by the placement and width of the crossbar.

The usage of the long s began to fade in English printing during the mid- to late-18th century, though it persisted in handwriting into the 19th century. Interestingly, the character remained a standard feature of German orthography well into the 20th century, forming the basis for the ligature ß. Today, the long s remains a fascinating relic of typography, serving as a visual marker that helps historians and archivists date and categorize printed volumes from the early modern period.

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