More About the Letter S

The letter S has a long history. The ancient Egypt, the “letter” (or rather, hieroglyph) was a picture of a sword. The Phoenicians used the letter as their word for “tooth”, although it looked more like a modern-day “w” in its form. The Greeks took what the Phoenicians began and turned the “w” on its side, eventually dropping the bottom line, giving it an appearance resembling the modern day letter. The Romans gave the letter “S” the modern-day appearance that it has, smoothing out the lines of the Greek letter.

Today, the letter “S” is the 19^th letter in the English alphabet. It has two primary sounds. The first is the soft sound, like in the word “shell”. The second sound is a harder sound that is very similar to the letter “Z”, like in the word “cheese”.

In Carolingian scripts, which came about during the time of Charlemagne, the letter “S” bears the resemblance of a lower case “r”. Eventually this lower-case “r” began to look like the letter “f”. Even in German today, eszett (ß) shows this evolvement of the letter.

The letter “S” is very interesting because of the many forms it can take. In old English, it looks like an “f”, “r”, “s” , and anything in between . In German it sometimes looks like a “B”. And even in modern English, the letter S has the potential to take many variations and forms just depending on who is writing the letter or what type of font is being used. It’s interesting that the letter has the potential to look very different, just depending on where the curves of the letter are placed.

I think that an animation using this letter could teach others about all the wonderful words that depend on the letter S. There are so many important things that we need this letter for in our language, and if it weren’t there, we would be missing so much. An animation using the letter S could delight others because it is very pleasing to look at. While it isn’t exactly symmetrical, there is a balance in the letter that is pleasing to the eye.

Information for this piece was referenced from:

http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/scripts/letters/historys.htm

http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2006/07/long-and-short-of-letter-s.html

http://snowledge.blogspot.com/2007/06/history-of-letter-s.html

http://www.fonts.com/AboutFonts/Articles/Letterseries/LetterS.htm