Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
It is to be noted that the peculiar capitalization in the articles of the Constitution does not generally extend to the amendments. The latest amendment to have any of these antiquated capitalization was the 12th and it went through Congress in 1803. Deos the use of the word "Citizens" in the 11th amendment mean anything different than the word "citizens" in the 26th?
Neither is the use of any German word that is capitalized in standard texts changed in those texts that do not employ that language's unusual capitalization standards. It is decorative, an aid to reading, and little more.
I was looking for a scanned copy of the original Constitution but the only one that I did find was not readable. If you really want to be accurate about 18th century texts, maybe we should be considering support of the long "s".
Yes, I have been using long ſ, whenever it occurs, in the texts I have been citing when giving quotations for la.wiktionary, e.g. under http://la.wiktionary.org/wiki/Bisemutum -- it comes up so often that I memorized the keyboard shortcut for it some time ago (it is 'alt-0383').
But then, I often use ſ in handwriting, so perhaps I'm biased.
*Muke!