I had a dormant bitcoin account when the August and November forks. I have initialized the Nano S, but i am trepidatious about doing anything withoiut better understanding of
the consequences.
Can you please clarify if you want to have the SAME bitcoin wallet on Electrum and on your Nano S?
Or are you just asking about having an Electrum wallet and having a separate Nano S wallet?
If you want the same wallet on both, your best bet is to simply initialise the Nano S, then create a new wallet in Electrum with the "Use Hardware Device" option and connect your Nano S. That will extract JUST the xpub from the Nano S and create a "watching-only" wallet, so you can see all your transactions/coins etc inside Electrum, but the seed/private keys are still securely contained on the Nano S ONLY.
Having the same seed in Electrum as your Nano S is a MAJOR security flaw... Electrum, while relatively secure if used properly, is nowhere near as secure as the Nano S and has a much larger attack surface for hackers/thieves to get access to your wallet and coins. The only time you should be doing something like this, is in an emergency recovery situation where you need access to the coins but the Nano S has been lost/stolen etc.
Electrum (watching only) + Nano S = A very powerful and secure combo
