Why was f used for s in old fashioned printing?

Answer 1

A good question. It is often seen in old fashioned printing that where an s is meant to go, it is replaced by what appears to be an f. Indeed it can be still seen today in logotypes that have stood the test of time, such as Jagermeister liquor.

The answer can be found not in the early printing industry, but what came before it. Before the printing press was invented, by the famous Gutenburg, all writing was done by hand. Scribes were among the most heavily employed artisans of that period.

This heavy employment attracted people to take up this job, creating in turn much competition. This competition lead on to force scribes to make their scripts incredible ornate, competing with one another for jobs by proving their script looked flasher than the other's (essentially the beginning of Graphic Design).

This lead to scribes being very critical about the visual impact of the letters, and so in cases where two s' were needed, it was deemed unsightly to have two normal ones, as this took up a disproportionate amount of space. So scribes used a elongated s that had little 'curve' in it, often making it both a descender and ascender. This gave it a very close look to an f.

It just so happened that it was around this time that the printing press was rediscovered, after Gutenburg had hidden his secret for fear of the Inquisition.

Printing became widespread, and was used for many of the scribe's most mundane and regular jobs. The printers adopted the most popular scripts of the time, as these were easily read by the people of the day. This included the s that was disgused as an f.

So mostly, what seems to be an f in the place of an s, is actually an s, but not how we write it today. Of course, there ARE examples of prints where the printer, who were typically not too well educated, used an f instead.

It was possibly for this reason that over time this peculiar s was dropped from common use, and the general public decided that clarity was more important than equal letter weighting.