The first book to discard ſ is said to have been Joseph Ames's Typographical Antiquities of 1749, but this was regarded as an eccentricity, and the normal ſ is used in Herkert's edition of 1785-90. The effective introduction of the reform has been credited to John Bell who in his British Theatre of 1791 used s throughout, the same practice being followed in the Boydell Shakespeare, of which vol. I appeared in 1792.[21]
It is worth noting that Capell in his Prolusions, 1760, had attempted a modification of the usual practice. He there uses s medially for a z-sound, retaining ſ for an s-sound, thus: easily, visible, rais'd, &c., but verſes, purſuit, ſatiſfy.
In London printing the reform was adopted very rapidly and, save in work of an intentionally antiquarian character, we do not find much use of ſ in the better kind of printing after 1800. The provincial presses seem, however, to have retained it somewhat longer and it is said to have been used at Oxford until 1824.
The letters i, j, u and v
As a general rule, until early in the seventeenth century there was only one capital letter, I (in Roman) or
(in black-letter), for the letters now represented by I and J; and only one capital letter V (in Roman) or
(in black-letter) for the letters U and V. As was pointed out by F. W. Bourdillon, this has in early French books the odd result that a libraire juré is liable to appear in capitals as "I V R E." When reprinting a black-letter text in Roman it seems logical to represent these by I and V in all cases, though some editors have preferred to use J and U, perhaps because the black-letter forms approximate more closely to these letters in shape.
In lower-case most founts had i, j, u and v, but j was only used in the combination ij (often a ligature) or in numerals, as xiij, while v and u were differentiated according to position, not according to pronunciation; v being always used at the beginning of a word and u always medially.