Upon visiting the U.S. Constitution in the National Archives museum, or seeing an image or recreation of the document elsewhere, one is at once struck by an interesting oddity. The letter “s” appears to be, in some places, replaced with a lowercase “f”! Why in the world does the Constitution speak of “Congreſs” rather than “Congress”?

You may need to zoom in or find a magnifying glass to notice that the letter is not actually an “f.” The little horizontal line is either nonexistent or is only found on the left side of the symbol’s body, rather than going all the way through. It looks like this: “ſ.” This letter is, in fact, a “long s,” which has long fallen out of use.

Conservator Rachel Bartgis at the National Archives writes that the English alphabet, being an offshoot of the Roman alphabet with the same feature (why the Romans favored this is unknown), used both a short and long “s” until the early 1800s. The “ſ,” the “long s,” was used at the (uncapitalized) beginning or middle of words. The “short s,” the one we know and love, was used at the end or when capitalization was involved. Today’s double “s” (like in “Congress”) would have both letters if at the end of a word (“Congreſs”), but you’d see “ſſ” in the middle of words (“paſſed”).

These rules, Bartgis says, changed over time and were not always followed. Marissa Laliberte at Reader’s Digest suggests that people of past centuries understood how confusing it could be to have an “f” and a “long s” that looked so similar, given certain historical rule breaks: “Often, a short S would go next to the letter F (e.g. misfortune) to avoid confusion.” Considering how small text was printed in newspapers in early America, one imagines plenty of opportunities for frustration.

According to Laliberte, printers in the late 18th century may have begun simplifying and streamlining their typesets, ditching the redundant letter, as technology changed. Each additional letter for new printers, after all, required materials and effort to create and use it. Bartgis implies, however, that the nature of typesetting may have slowed down the transition a bit, as getting rid of one letter required getting rid of several combination blocks used in the printer, such as “ſh” (for the “shhhh” sound). Replacing all those could be costly.

While you will not see the “long s” much outside of historical documents, and there remains work to do for historians to uncover why users of Latin (as well as Greek) felt the need for two lowercase “s” letters, your visits to the National Mall will at least be far less confusing in the future.

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