Wizard Baruffio and the Wingardium Leviosa Charm Revisited

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 160004

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "MercuryBlue" <MercuryBlue144 at ...> wrote:
>
> > Nor does 
> > calling it a typo; (it should have been "f instead of s") as that 
> > makes more sense "Wingardium Leviofa" -- I don't buy this one either.
> 
> I'm sorry, I thought it was obvious. I already posted a link to a 
> picture on Wikipedia of the Bill of Rights. Post 159752. The words in 
> big letters across the top are obviously 'Congress of the United 
> States', but the first word looks very much like 'Congrefs'. Old 
> documents are weird that way. I always figured Baruffio was reading 
> his spell out of a book and thought an F was actually a very-similar-
> appearing S.

> MercuryBlue

Geoff:
The use of the "long s"  was quite common in old English (and was also 
noticeable in German books using the Gothic typeface until quite recently). It 
was often used in a double "fs" in English.

As a side issue, it still exists in Maths when used as the integration 
symbol in calculus.