Final form

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In certain languages, the final form is a special character used to represent a letter only when it occurs at the end of a word. Some languages that use final form characters are: Arabic, Hebrew, Manchu and one letter in Greek (ς).

The lowercase Latin letter "s" had separate medial (ſ) and final (s) in the orthographies of many European languages from the medieval period to the early 19th century; it survived in the German Fraktur script until the 1940s.

Hebrew[]

In the Hebrew alphabet the final form is called sofit (Hebrew: סופית, meaning "final" or "ending").

This set of letters is known acronymically as אותיות מנצפ"ך‎ (מ,נ,צ,פ,ך letters).

The now final forms ן ץ ף ך‎ predate their non-final counterparts; They were the default forms used in any position within a word. Their descender eventually bent forwards when preceding another letter to facilitate writing. A final form of these letters is also called pshuta (פשוטה‎, meaning extended or plain).

The letter Mem also had a descender