tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post7994575356195518238..comments2024-03-25T15:10:13.792+00:00Comments on English Buildings: Ruardean, GloucestershirePhilip Wilkinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-4761480254597234892009-07-07T09:51:00.174+01:002009-07-07T09:51:00.174+01:00I learned a lot of this kind of stuff (the rudimen...I learned a lot of this kind of stuff (the rudiments of traditional printing, how books were bound, which compositor set which bits of Shakespeare's First Folio, etc, etc) in Oxford's course that was designed to prepare graduate students for the rigours (hah!) of literary studies at postgraduate level. I seem to remember that this course was called something like Prolegomenon to literary scholarship. How odd that I should be trying to recall it now, and in this new(ish) medium. (Prolegomenon. Now there's a word you don't often get to use...)Philip Wilkinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-91943152008485158122009-07-06T22:59:25.988+01:002009-07-06T22:59:25.988+01:00Is blogging the last bastion of old-fashioned scho...Is blogging the last bastion of old-fashioned scholarship? Universities are really not interested in this stuff anymore... Anyway, besides all this business about the long and the short s, we should not forget the stone-cutter's wage. These people were paid by the letter - so if there wasn't room to put it on the end, it got squeezed in above.Neilhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18020242863144175965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-76081755424565129182009-07-06T16:00:59.511+01:002009-07-06T16:00:59.511+01:00What faith those wonderfully named churchwardens m...What faith those wonderfully named churchwardens must have had!Ron Combohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05270358674385406494noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-39190027166675743072009-07-06T12:47:09.277+01:002009-07-06T12:47:09.277+01:00Nothing to add to Philip's excellent summary, ...Nothing to add to Philip's excellent summary, except that ancient Greek used two different characters for 's' in a very similar way - the usual sigma (a circle with a sunvisor) everywhere except at the end of words, where it stretched out into an elongated 's'. Presumably that helped make the long s seem logical to the classically-educated?CarolineLDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00197813252586559665noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-30513091629259238082009-07-05T21:53:34.016+01:002009-07-05T21:53:34.016+01:00Right. It's not an 'f', it's somet...Right. It's not an 'f', it's something known as 'the long s'. If you look carefully at it in most iterations, it's subtly different from, but very similar to, an 'f'. The similarity is increased in examples of the long s that have a small protrusion sticking out of the ascender, but this doesn't go all the way across, like the cross-piece of a proper 'f'. <br /><br />The long s, which began I think with the Roman cursive style of writing, was originally used in the middles of words, but when the printers of the Renaissance took it up, they used it more loosely, so it also appeared at the end of words as well as in the middle, but not in certain combinations in the middle of words – when an 's' and an 'f' appeared together, for example (as in the word 'satisfy'), the short s would generally be used. In Britain, we often see it in 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-century printed books, and in inscriptions of the same period, and, you're right, its application is inconsistent. As far as I remember it died out some time in the 18th century.<br /><br />This is all from distant memories of handling old books in the Bodleian Library years ago. Others who read this might be able to correct it or add more.<br /><br />The use of the long s doesn't affect pronunciation, by the way. Although I do have a book of Shakespeare songs in which the long s is used in 'Where the bee sucks, there suck I', making a change in pronunciation somewhat tempting.Philip Wilkinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4228081722487474323.post-47769104186079341922009-07-05T20:32:26.699+01:002009-07-05T20:32:26.699+01:00With this wonderfully atmospheric photograph you h...With this wonderfully atmospheric photograph you have reminded me of a current debate in the environs of Ashley Towers. And that is the seemingly random substitution of the letter 's' with an 'f'. There appears to be no logic for its application. Can you help?Peter Ashleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00027878122724846472noreply@blogger.com