tall s

plural tall s's

1. Synonym of long s.

   Especially typical are the elongated descenders of f and tall s, which regularly extend into the following line.

   2020, Karl-Georg Pfändtner, “Gothic script in Germany”, in Frank Coulson, Robert Babcock, editor, The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography, Oxford University Press, page 406

   4 more examples

   With all this, I think I could produce writings in modern cursive quite as difficult of perusal as most or any of the ancient cursives ; for, as for the genuine minuscule alphabet, it appears to have been, from the first, very much if not quite the same as we now use in writing ; save that in recent centuries the tall s (ſ) has been considered applicable only to typography ; and that we put a dot over the i, and commonly give a certain degree of inclination to the letters, in writing, which the ancients did not ; and that besides, we are more careful than they were to leave proper spaces between our words, and to separate one sentence, or member of a sentence, from another, by marks of punctuation.

   1836, William Young Ottley, “A Letter to John Gage, Esq. F.R.S. Director, by William Young Ottley, Esq. F.S.A., Sfc., on a Manuscript in the British Museum, believed by him to be of the Second or Third Century, and containing the translation of Aratus’s astronomical Poem by Cicero, accompanied by Drawings of the Constellations: with a preliminary Dissertation, in proof of the use of Minuscule Writing by the ancient Romans; and a corrected edition of the Poem itself, including ten lines not heretofore known”, in Archaeologia: or, Miscellaneous tracts relating to Antiquity, volume 26, Society of Antiquaries of London, page 117

   Confusion of the tall s with f is possible, because by most writers the two letters are formed in precisely the same way – except for one important detail! The head of the s may curve down and leftward toward the shaft. but it cannot touch or cross the shaft. since if it does it becomes no longer an s but an f. Occasionally a writer through inadvertance makes an f when he intends s, and vice versa, but this is rare.

   1966, Giles E. Dawson, Elizabethan handwriting, 1500-1650: a manual, Norton

   The noteworthy letter-foms in its script are as follows: [...], s, usually low, but occasional use of tall s and split s (note that in ss the forms do not vary); [...].

   1986, Michael Roper, “A Fragment of Bede’s De Temporum Ratione in the Public Record Office”, in Anglo-Saxon England, volume 14, page 126

   Sharp diagonal serifs are applied to the heads of ascenders, notably d and tall s, which acquires a loop in the process.

   1990, Michelle P. Brown, A guide to Western historical scripts from antiquity to 1600, University of Toronto Press, page 120

   Synonyms: long s