    the long, medial, or descending s (Å¿) is a form of the minuscule letter s, which was formerly used where s occurred in the middle or at the beginning of a word (e.g. "Å¿infulneÅ¿s" "sinfulness"). the modern letterform was called the terminal, round, or short s. ==history== thumb|100px|left|the medial 's' in old roman cursive   the long s was derived from the old roman cursive medial s. when the distinction between majuscule (uppercase) and minuscule (lowercase) letter forms became established, toward the end of the eighth century, it developed a more vertical form.. during this period, it was occasionally used at the end of a word, a practice that quickly died but that was occasionally revived in italian printing between about 1465 and 1480. thus, the general rule that the long s "never occurred at the end of a word" is not strictly correct, although the exceptions are rare and archaic. the double s in the middle of a word was often written with a long s and a short s, as in miÅ¿siÅ¿sippi.look at this map from 1800. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/lowsusamap_1.jpeg in german blackletter, the rules are more complicated: short s also appears at the end of each component within a compound word. the long s is often confused with the minuscule f, sometimes even having an f-like nub at its middle, but on the left side only, in various roman typefaces and in blackletter. there was no nub in its italic typeform, which gave the stroke a descender that curled to the left and which is not possible without kerning in the other typeforms mentioned. for this reason, the short s was also normally used in combination with f: for example, in "Å¿atisfaction". the nub acquired its form in the blackletter style of writing. what looks like one stroke was actually a wedge pointing downward. the wedge's widest part was at that height (x-height), and capped by a second stroke that formed an [[ascende
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