2654: Lingering Traces of Long S Mar 24, 2022

While usage of the long s ⟨ſ⟩ declined sharply after the start of the 19th century, but it did not totally disappear. First of all, it was used in the alphabets as its own letter—that is, not as a variant of 'S'—such as in various writing systems of Slavic and Caucasian languages even into the early 20th century; Turkmen used it for its Latin script as its own letter before that was replaced with 'ž'. Moreover, it is still found as a ligature making up the German ß (sz) though this has long been considered its own letter.

Moreover, outside of specific writing systems, it was the symbol of the shiling when that was part of British currency, though this has largely been replaced with a / symbol. ⟨ſ⟩ is used in mathematics for integrals, though this is a stylized form based on the italicised version /ʃ/, hence the tail at the end and no x-height nub. In the International Phonetic alphabet, the same italicised version /ʃ/ is used to represent the first found in 'SHort'.