On Sunday, August 18, 1996 at 3:00:00 AM UTC-4, Lea V. Usin wrote in alt.usage.english:
> Jack Lynch (jly...@dept.english.upenn.edu) writes:
> [snip]
> > The reason -- I work with digitized texts from before 1800, when the long
> > _s_ was in use -- the one that looks disturbingly like an _f_. When I'm
> > counting on a scanner (training OCR programs is spotty at best) or an
> > inexperienced typist ("inexperienced" here having its somewhat narrow
> > meaning of "one who doesn't routinely read books over two centuries old"),
> > I often see the letters confused. Spelling checkers catch most of 'em,
> > but it would be handy to have a list of words to search for to make sure
> > no such pairs have been reversed.
>
> A friend of mine claims to have once witnessed in a Shakespeare course the
> results of a hapless young woman who ...

Instead, I like how that Christmasy tasting drink called Jägermeister says Jägermeifter on the label.

On 12/17/2022 2:34 PM, bruce bowser wrote:
> On Sunday, August 18, 1996 at 3:00:00 AM UTC-4, Lea V. Usin wrote in alt.usage.english:
>> Jack Lynch (jly...@dept.english.upenn.edu) writes:
>> [snip]
>>> The reason -- I work with digitized texts from before 1800, when the long
>>> _s_ was in use -- the one that looks disturbingly like an _f_. When I'm
>>> counting on a scanner (training OCR programs is spotty at best) or an
>>> inexperienced typist ("inexperienced" here having its somewhat narrow
>>> meaning of "one who doesn't routinely read books over two centuries old"),
>>> I often see the letters confused. Spelling checkers catch most of 'em,
>>> but it would be handy to have a list of words to search for to make sure
>>> no such pairs have been reversed.
>>
>> A friend of mine claims to have once witnessed in a Shakespeare course the
>> results of a hapless young woman who ...
>
> Instead, I like how that Christmasy tasting drink called Jägermeister says Jägermeifter on the label.

The long s can be traced back to Roman times, when the lowercase s
typical took an elongated form in cursive writing in Latin. According to
librarians at the New York Academy of Medicine, people were using the
long s at the beginning and middle of words by the 12th century.

The long s and the more familiar short s represent the same sound, and
the rules for using long s versus short s varied over time and place,
Overholt said

On Saturday, December 17, 2022 at 3:24:52 PM UTC-6, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
> On 12/17/2022 2:34 PM, bruce bowser wrote:
> > On Sunday, August 18, 1996 at 3:00:00 AM UTC-4, Lea V. Usin wrote in alt.usage.english:
> >> Jack Lynch (jly...@dept.english.upenn.edu) writes:
> >> [snip]
> >>> The reason -- I work with digitized texts from before 1800, when the long
> >>> _s_ was in use -- the one that looks disturbingly like an _f_. When I'm
> >>> counting on a scanner (training OCR programs is spotty at best) or an
> >>> inexperienced typist ("inexperienced" here having its somewhat narrow
> >>> meaning of "one who doesn't routinely read books over two centuries old"),
> >>> I often see the letters confused. Spelling checkers catch most of 'em,
> >>> but it would be handy to have a list of words to search for to make sure
> >>> no such pairs have been reversed.
> >>
> >> A friend of mine claims to have once witnessed in a Shakespeare course the
> >> results of a hapless young woman who ...
> >
> > Instead, I like how that Christmasy tasting drink called Jägermeister says Jägermeifter on the label.
> The long s can be traced back to Roman times, when the lowercase s
> typical took an elongated form in cursive writing in Latin. According to
> librarians at the New York Academy of Medicine, people were using the
> long s at the beginning and middle of words by the 12th century.
>
> The long s and the more familiar short s represent the same sound, and
> the rules for using long s versus short s varied over time and place,
> Overholt said

Holy fhit !