Written like a paraplegic f, the long s (ſ) was an indispensable, unembarrassing part of the English language until relatively recently. The long s began s-words (”ſee the gleam of the ſwords of the Franks”), and with few exceptions was the only s used in the middles of words (”words being moſtly ſcurilous tax aſſeſſments”).

Why we lost the long s over the course of the nineteenth century is easy to see: It looks like a damn f, and don’t nobody want to go squintin when they don’t have to. (”Has your ſiſter ſeen my new fave flick, the ſtupendouſly fantastic 2 Faſt, 2 Furious, ſtarring the famous Vin Dieſel?”)

But still I wonder about my name (”Marſchall”) and the other countless words whose shapes so differed only two centuries ago. And when I see emoticons, when I see the Apple command symbol, I hear the ghosts of dead punctuation marks scratching at the edges of discourse, all those daggers and commashes and ligatures, and especially the once-ubiquitous ſ.

Will people eventually un-learn other letters?  We don’t need the c, which just steals limelight from the s and the k. Perhaps, in another two hundred years, c and ſ can chill out and ſimply ſip ſex on the beaches together, in the purgatorial crappy cantina of laid-aſide orthography. Perhaps, my confuſing friend. Perhaps.