Re: Englifh fpelling

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

At 03:56 PM 1/17/01 -0800, Vern Lindberg wrote:
> I noticed on a copy of the title page of P.M. that there were two
> versions of the letter "s", one that looked like an integral sign,

That's called a "long s".

> one that is like our current lower-case s. As far as I could tell,
> the lower case veraion was used for an "s" appearing at the end of a
> sentence,

Or simply at the end of a word.  For fun, look at the word "pass" in the
fifth paragraph of
    http://earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/doi/doi.jpg

> and the integral-sign form for s interior to a word. Was
> this the rule at Newton's time?

Yes, and well into the 18th century.

> And what would appear for an "s" at
> the start of a word, either capitalized or not?

There was only one capital, resembling our modern S.

If not capitalized, and not at the end of the word, expect a "long s".  For
lots of examples, see
  http://www.people.virginia.edu/~msk5d/hariot/1590/hariot01.html
and following pages.

At 04:20 PM 1/17/01 -0500, Bob Sciamanda wrote:
> I. B. Cohen's edition of Newton's papers has some photographic
> reproductions of Newton's papers published in English in "Philosophical
> Transactions".  I see three different forms of the letter "s".  The two
> you mention and a third which resembles an f. I find all of them both
> beginning words and inside words.

The f-shaped one is just a long-s with less of a tail.  In particular, in both
  http://earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/doi/doi.jpg  and
  http://www.people.virginia.edu/~msk5d/hariot/1590/hariot01.html
you see that the long-s has a tail in the italic font, but no tail in the
roman font.

BTW the fpelling in the subject line is a joke;  the cross-bar gives it
away as an f, not any form of s.