ß
Encyclopedia
In the German alphabet
, ß (Unicode
U+00DF) is a letter
that originated as a ligature of ss or sz. Like double "s", it is pronounced as an s (see IPA), but in standard spelling, it is only used after long
vowel
s and diphthong
s, while ss is used after short vowels. Its German
name is Eszett (ʔɛsˈt͡sɛt, lexicalized expression for sz) or scharfes S (ˈʃaʁfəs ˈʔɛs, ˈʃaːɐ̯fəs ˈʔɛs, sharp S).
(1732–1806). In the 1820s, a revision was proposed by Johann Christian August Heyse
(1764–1829); it was adopted in the German orthography reform of 1996.
The general rule for using ſ versus s is the same in German and in English: ſ is used at the beginning and in the middle of words, s at the end. (Note that Grasſoden and Hauseſel are compound words: Haus-Eſel, Gras-Soden.)
Adelung's rule for ss versus ß is: In the middle of a word, use ss after short vowels, ß after long ones. At the end, always use ß.
Heyse's rule: Both, in the middle and at the end of words, use ss after short vowels, ß after long ones. (This conforms to the doubling rule for other consonants like 'Hüte' versus 'Hütte' or 'kam' vs. 'Kamm'.)
In the late 18th and early 19th century, when more and more German texts were printed in Roman type
, typesetters looked for a Roman counterpart for the blackletter
ſz ligature, which did not exist in Roman fonts. Printers experimented with various solutions, mostly replacing blackletter ß in Roman type with either sz, ss, ſs, or some combination of these. Although there are early examples in Roman type of a ſs-ligature that looks like the letter ß, it was not commonly used as Eszett.
It was only with the First Orthographic Conference in Berlin in 1876 that printers and type foundries started to look for a common letter form to represent the Eszett in Roman type. In 1879, a proposal for various letter forms was published in the Journal für Buchdruckerkunst. A committee of the Typographic Society of Leipzig chose the so-called Sulzbacher Form. In 1903 it was proclaimed as the new standard for the Eszett in Roman type.
Since then, German printing set in Roman type has used the letter ß. The Sulzbacher Form, however, did not find unanimous acceptance. It became the default form, but many type designers preferred (and still prefer) other forms. Some resemble a blackletter sz-ligature, others more a Roman ſs-ligature.
To the reader unfamiliar with German, the ß's "s" origin may be obscure or nearly undetectable, particularly in the Sulzbacher Form. Long s
itself was frequently confused with "f," which led to its demise in English writing around 1800. Unlike German, ß per se has apparently never been used in English. Rather, various other forms are seen for ss in pre-modern literature and handwriting. A double long-s [ſſ] is seen in places such as scans of the original Geneva Bible
of 1560. Scans of British census sheets of the 19th century may show a simple unligatured long-s short-s or something that looks to the modern eye as a long-ascendered p. Where the latter case is seen, the pre-modern English handwritten p differs from its ſs generally both by the p's shorter ascender as well as the p's bowl being drawn with a space left at the bottom versus the s of the ſs being drawn in more completely at the bottom.
There have been four typographical solutions for the form of the Antiqua ß. Currently, most Antiqua ß are shaped according to the second or the fourth solution. The first and third solution are seldom found.
Thus it helps to distinguish words like Buße (long vowel) 'penance, fine' and Busse (short vowel) 'buses'.
Note that in words where the stem
changes, some forms may have an ß but others an ss, for instance sie beißen (‘they bite’) vs. sie bissen (‘they bit’).
The same rules apply at the end of a word or syllable
, but are complicated by the fact that single s is also pronounced /s/ in those positions. Thus, words like groß ('large') require ß, while others, like Gras ('grass') use a single s. The correct spelling is not predictable out of context (in standard grammar), but is usually made clear by related forms, e.g., Größe ('size') and grasen ('to graze'), where the medial consonants are pronounced /s/ and /z/ respectively. Many dialects however have an even longer vowel, or an audibly less sharp s, in cases single s is used.
The spelling reform affected some German-language forms of foreign place names, such as Rußland ("Russia
"), now Russland, and Preßburg ("Bratislava
"), now Pressburg. The orthography of personal names (first names and family names) and of names for locations within Germany proper, Austria and Switzerland were not affected by the reform of 1996, however; these names often use irregular spellings that are otherwise impermissible under German spelling rules, not only in the matter of the ß but also in many other respects.
The pre-1996 orthography encouraged the use of SZ in place of ß in words with all letters capitalized where a usual SS would produce an ambiguous result. One possible ambiguity was between IN MASZEN (in limited amounts; Maß, "measure") and IN MASSEN (in massive amounts; Masse, "mass"). Such cases were rare enough that this rule was officially abandoned; however, it is still simply unimaginable for a non-Swiss to enjoy alcohol "in Massen", probably leading to old use where necessary. The German military still occasionally uses the capitalized SZ, even without any possible ambiguity, as SCHIESZGERÄT (“shooting materials”). Architectural drawings may also use SZ in capitalizations because capital letters and both MASZE and MASSE are frequently used. Military teleprinter
operation within Germany still uses sz for ß (unlike German typewriters, German teleprinter machines never featured either umlaut
s or the ß letter).
This ss that replaces an ß had to be hyphenated as a single letter before the 1996 reform. For instance STRA-SSE (‘street’); compare Stra-ße. After the reform, it was hyphenated like other double consonants: STRAS-SE.
and Liechtenstein
ss usually replaces every ß. This is officially sanctioned by the German orthography rules, which state in §25 E₂: In der Schweiz kann man immer „ss“ schreiben ("In Switzerland, one can always write 'ss'").
The ß has been gradually abolished since the 1930s, when most cantons
decided not to teach it anymore and the Swiss postal service stopped using it in place names. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung
was the last Swiss newspaper to give up the ß, in 1974. Today, Swiss publishing houses use ß only for books that address the entire German-speaking market.
More recently, ß has experienced a resurgence in use in these countries (as well as Hungary
) for informal Internet and SMS
communication (similar to the use of k in Italy
for ch). For brevity's sake, ß (one character) becomes preferable to German ss or Hungarian sz (two characters). This usage is only passive, because autocompletion programs in mobile phones encourage users to this behaviour.
ß is nearly unique among the letters of Latin alphabet
in that it has no traditional upper case form. This is because it never occurs initially, and traditional German printing in blackletter never used all-caps.
There have been repeated attempts to introduce an upper case ß. Such letterforms can be found in some older German books and some modern signage and product design. Since April 4, 2008 Unicode 5.1.0 has included as U+1E9E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S.
letter "β" (beta)
, which the so called Sulzbacher form closely resembles, particularly to the eyes of non-German or non-Greek readers. Any typeset material should use the ß; where that letter is unavailable, the substitution of "ss" for "ß" is correct, and clearly preferable to the use of Greek "β".
The differences between "ß" and "β" in most typefaces are:
However, the reverse substitution of using German "ß" as a surrogate for Greek "β" once was common when describing beta test
versions of application programs for older operating systems, whose character encoding
s, most notably Latin-1
and Windows-1252
, did not support easy use of Greek letters. Also, the original IBM DOS code page
, CP437
(aka OEM-US) conflates the two characters, assigning them the same codepoint (0xE1) and a glyph that minimises their differences. Though the difference between ß and β is usually obvious in some ornate serif
and most sans-serif
typefaces (where its "s" origins are more emphasized), a few fonts still use the Sulzbacher design, which renders both characters as near-homoglyph
s, the only noticeable difference being the descender on beta: ß β.
Also note: in German handwriting and in Fraktur, the ß is written very similar to β, reaching below the line with the bottom loop connected to the vertical line.
, where Clark Griswold reads a sign for Dipplestraße as Dipplestrabe around 54 minutes in.
In Germany and Austria, the letter ß is present on computer and typewriter keyboards, normally to the right on the upper row. In other countries, the letter is not marked on the keyboard, but a combination of other keys can produce it. Often, the letter is input using a modifier and the s key. The details of the keyboard layout depend on the input language and operating system.
Mac OS X
Microsoft Windows
X-based systems
GNU Emacs
GNOME
AmigaOS
Plan 9
RISC OS
The Vim
and GNU Screen
digraph is ss.
the Sumerian language
, to mean 'sh'. Some Sumerian scholars use 'sz' or '$' instead.
It was also in use for Latin during the Medieval and Renaissance time, until the 18th century.
E.g.: clarißimus - clarissimus - the brightest; eße - ĕsse - to be; amavißet - amavisset and so on.
'ß' was used to mean 'š' in a German-influenced spelling system for the Lithuanian language
which was used in Lithuania Minor
in East Prussia
: the page section Prussian Lithuanians#Personal names has some examples of Prussian Lithuanian surname
s containing 'ß'.
In word processing
contexts, ß is sometimes associated with the umlaut
, for a purely practical reason: both ß and the umlauted ä
, ö
, ü
are not in ASCII
. Thus they tend to cause the same kinds of problems in all sorts of legacy digital text processing applications. Historically, the development of ß is not related to the umlaut, and they are not associated outside of character encoding
contexts.
ß is sometimes used in German writing to indicate a pronunciation of /s/ where /z/ would otherwise be usual (in Standard German, initial
; thus ßind ßie? ("Sind Sie?").
The HTML entity for ß is
is 223, or DF in hexadecimal
. In TeX
and LaTeX
, \ss produces ß.
Also, ß (as well as Ä, Ö, Ü) is widely not considered part of the standard alphabet. If asked how many letters in the alphabet, most Germans would answer 26 instead of 30. Sometimes even 29 may be heard, if it is forgotten that the dots of ä are an old e placed over the vowel, but ß is still remembered as a ligation of sz or ss.
German alphabet
The modern German alphabet is an extended Latin alphabet consisting of 30 letters – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet plus four extra letters.In German, the individual letters have neuter gender: das A, das B etc....
, ß (Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
U+00DF) is a letter
Letter (alphabet)
A letter is a grapheme in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Letters compose phonemes and each phoneme represents a phone in the spoken form of the language....
that originated as a ligature of ss or sz. Like double "s", it is pronounced as an s (see IPA), but in standard spelling, it is only used after long
Vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s and diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s, while ss is used after short vowels. Its German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
name is Eszett (ʔɛsˈt͡sɛt, lexicalized expression for sz) or scharfes S (ˈʃaʁfəs ˈʔɛs, ˈʃaːɐ̯fəs ˈʔɛs, sharp S).
Adelung versus Heyse
There are two ways to determine where to use ss and where to use ß for an s. The standard system was set by Johann Christoph AdelungJohann Christoph Adelung
Johann Christoph Adelung was a German grammarian and philologist.He was born at Spantekow, in Western Pomerania, and educated at schools in Anklam and Berge Monastery, Magdeburg, and the University of Halle...
(1732–1806). In the 1820s, a revision was proposed by Johann Christian August Heyse
Johann Christian August Heyse
Johann Christian August Heyse was a German grammarian and lexicographer, born at Nordhausen and educated at Göttingen. He taught at Oldenburg, Nordhausen, and Magdeburg...
(1764–1829); it was adopted in the German orthography reform of 1996.
| Fraktur according to Adelung | Waſſerschloſʒ | Floſʒ | Paſʒſtraſʒe | Maſʒſtab | Grasſoden | Hauseſel |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fraktur according to Heyse | Waſſerschloſs | Floſʒ | Paſsſtraſʒe | Maſʒſtab | Grasſoden | Hauseſel |
| Antiqua in 19th century | Wasserschloss | Floss | Paſsstrasse | Maſsstab | Grassoden | Hausesel |
| Antiqua in 20th century (Adelung) | Wasserschloß | Floß | Paßstraße | Maßstab | Grassoden | Hausesel |
| Antiqua in 21st century (Heyse) | Wasserschloss | Floß | Passstraße, Pass-Straße |
Maßstab | Grassoden | Hausesel |
The general rule for using ſ versus s is the same in German and in English: ſ is used at the beginning and in the middle of words, s at the end. (Note that Grasſoden and Hauseſel are compound words: Haus-Eſel, Gras-Soden.)
Adelung's rule for ss versus ß is: In the middle of a word, use ss after short vowels, ß after long ones. At the end, always use ß.
Heyse's rule: Both, in the middle and at the end of words, use ss after short vowels, ß after long ones. (This conforms to the doubling rule for other consonants like 'Hüte' versus 'Hütte' or 'kam' vs. 'Kamm'.)
Origin of long s and s as ligature in Roman type
Roman type
In typography, roman is one of the three main kinds of historical type, alongside blackletter and italic. Roman type was modelled from a European scribal manuscript style of the 1400s, based on the pairing of inscriptional capitals used in ancient Rome with Carolingian minuscules developed in the...
, typesetters looked for a Roman counterpart for the blackletter
Blackletter
Blackletter, also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 to well into the 17th century. It continued to be used for the German language until the 20th century. Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes...
ſz ligature, which did not exist in Roman fonts. Printers experimented with various solutions, mostly replacing blackletter ß in Roman type with either sz, ss, ſs, or some combination of these. Although there are early examples in Roman type of a ſs-ligature that looks like the letter ß, it was not commonly used as Eszett.
It was only with the First Orthographic Conference in Berlin in 1876 that printers and type foundries started to look for a common letter form to represent the Eszett in Roman type. In 1879, a proposal for various letter forms was published in the Journal für Buchdruckerkunst. A committee of the Typographic Society of Leipzig chose the so-called Sulzbacher Form. In 1903 it was proclaimed as the new standard for the Eszett in Roman type.
Since then, German printing set in Roman type has used the letter ß. The Sulzbacher Form, however, did not find unanimous acceptance. It became the default form, but many type designers preferred (and still prefer) other forms. Some resemble a blackletter sz-ligature, others more a Roman ſs-ligature.
To the reader unfamiliar with German, the ß's "s" origin may be obscure or nearly undetectable, particularly in the Sulzbacher Form. Long s
Long s
The long, medial or descending s is a form of the minuscule letter s formerly used where s occurred in the middle or at the beginning of a word, for example "ſinfulneſs" . The modern letterform was called the terminal, round, or short s.-History:The long s is derived from the old Roman cursive...
itself was frequently confused with "f," which led to its demise in English writing around 1800. Unlike German, ß per se has apparently never been used in English. Rather, various other forms are seen for ss in pre-modern literature and handwriting. A double long-s [ſſ] is seen in places such as scans of the original Geneva Bible
Geneva Bible
The Geneva Bible is one of the most historically significant translations of the Bible into the English language, preceding the King James translation by 51 years. It was the primary Bible of the 16th century Protestant movement and was the Bible used by William Shakespeare, Oliver Cromwell, John...
of 1560. Scans of British census sheets of the 19th century may show a simple unligatured long-s short-s or something that looks to the modern eye as a long-ascendered p. Where the latter case is seen, the pre-modern English handwritten p differs from its ſs generally both by the p's shorter ascender as well as the p's bowl being drawn with a space left at the bottom versus the s of the ſs being drawn in more completely at the bottom.
Alternative representations in Antiqua
- letter combination ſs (not as a ligature, but as a single type)
- ligature of ſ and s
- ligature of ſ and a kind of blackletter z that looks similar to an "" (ezh) or a "3", though it might rather be described as a "Z with a hook" (this solution resembles the original blackletter ligature)
- The Sulzbacher Form
Current usage in German
Since the German spelling reform of 1996, both ß and ss are used to represent /s/ between two vowels as follows:- ß is used after diphthongDiphthongA diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s (beißen [ˈbaɪ̯sən] ‘to bite’)) - ß is used after long vowels (grüßen [ˈɡʀyːsən] ‘to greet’)
- ss is used after short vowels (küssen [ˈkʰʏsən] ‘to kiss’)
Thus it helps to distinguish words like Buße (long vowel) 'penance, fine' and Busse (short vowel) 'buses'.
Note that in words where the stem
Word stem
In linguistics, a stem is a part of a word. The term is used with slightly different meanings.In one usage, a stem is a form to which affixes can be attached. Thus, in this usage, the English word friendships contains the stem friend, to which the derivational suffix -ship is attached to form a new...
changes, some forms may have an ß but others an ss, for instance sie beißen (‘they bite’) vs. sie bissen (‘they bit’).
The same rules apply at the end of a word or syllable
Syllable coda
In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a rime. Some syllables consist only of a nucleus with no coda...
, but are complicated by the fact that single s is also pronounced /s/ in those positions. Thus, words like groß ('large') require ß, while others, like Gras ('grass') use a single s. The correct spelling is not predictable out of context (in standard grammar), but is usually made clear by related forms, e.g., Größe ('size') and grasen ('to graze'), where the medial consonants are pronounced /s/ and /z/ respectively. Many dialects however have an even longer vowel, or an audibly less sharp s, in cases single s is used.
Usage before the spelling reform of 1996
Before the 1996 spelling reform, ß was always used at the end of a word or word-component, or before a consonant, even when the preceding vowel was short. For example, Fuß ('foot') has a long vowel, pronounced /fuːs/, and so was unaffected by the spelling reform; but Kuß ('kiss') has a short vowel, pronounced /kʊs/, and was reformed to Kuss. Other pre-1996 examples included Eßunlust ('loss of appetite'), and wäßrig ('watery'), but Wasser ('water').The spelling reform affected some German-language forms of foreign place names, such as Rußland ("Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
"), now Russland, and Preßburg ("Bratislava
Bratislava
Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...
"), now Pressburg. The orthography of personal names (first names and family names) and of names for locations within Germany proper, Austria and Switzerland were not affected by the reform of 1996, however; these names often use irregular spellings that are otherwise impermissible under German spelling rules, not only in the matter of the ß but also in many other respects.
The pre-1996 orthography encouraged the use of SZ in place of ß in words with all letters capitalized where a usual SS would produce an ambiguous result. One possible ambiguity was between IN MASZEN (in limited amounts; Maß, "measure") and IN MASSEN (in massive amounts; Masse, "mass"). Such cases were rare enough that this rule was officially abandoned; however, it is still simply unimaginable for a non-Swiss to enjoy alcohol "in Massen", probably leading to old use where necessary. The German military still occasionally uses the capitalized SZ, even without any possible ambiguity, as SCHIESZGERÄT (“shooting materials”). Architectural drawings may also use SZ in capitalizations because capital letters and both MASZE and MASSE are frequently used. Military teleprinter
Teleprinter
A teleprinter is a electromechanical typewriter that can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point and point to multipoint over a variety of communication channels that range from a simple electrical connection, such as a pair of wires, to the use of radio and microwave as the...
operation within Germany still uses sz for ß (unlike German typewriters, German teleprinter machines never featured either umlaut
Umlaut
Umlaut may refer to:*Diaeresis , a pair of dots above a vowel, used in German to mark umlaut**Metal umlaut, the same diacritic in names of heavy metal or hard rock bands for effect...
s or the ß letter).
Substitution and all caps
If no ß is available, ss or sz is used instead. (Sz especially in Hungarian-influenced eastern Austria.) This applies especially to all caps or small caps texts because ß does not have a generally accepted majuscule form. Excepted are all caps names in legal documents; they may retain an ß to prevent ambiguity, e.g., HANS STRAßER.This ss that replaces an ß had to be hyphenated as a single letter before the 1996 reform. For instance STRA-SSE (‘street’); compare Stra-ße. After the reform, it was hyphenated like other double consonants: STRAS-SE.
Switzerland and Liechtenstein
In SwitzerlandSwitzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein
The Principality of Liechtenstein is a doubly landlocked alpine country in Central Europe, bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and by Austria to the east. Its area is just over , and it has an estimated population of 35,000. Its capital is Vaduz. The biggest town is Schaan...
ss usually replaces every ß. This is officially sanctioned by the German orthography rules, which state in §25 E₂: In der Schweiz kann man immer „ss“ schreiben ("In Switzerland, one can always write 'ss'").
The ß has been gradually abolished since the 1930s, when most cantons
Cantons of Switzerland
The 26 cantons of Switzerland are the member states of the federal state of Switzerland. Each canton was a fully sovereign state with its own borders, army and currency from the Treaty of Westphalia until the establishment of the Swiss federal state in 1848...
decided not to teach it anymore and the Swiss postal service stopped using it in place names. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung is a major German language Swiss daily newspaper based in Zurich.One of the oldest newspapers still published, it originally appeared as Zürcher Zeitung, edited by Salomon Gessner, from January 12, 1780, and was renamed to Neue Zürcher Zeitung in 1821...
was the last Swiss newspaper to give up the ß, in 1974. Today, Swiss publishing houses use ß only for books that address the entire German-speaking market.
More recently, ß has experienced a resurgence in use in these countries (as well as Hungary
Hungarian alphabet
The Hungarian alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Hungarian language.One sometimes speaks of the smaller and greater Hungarian alphabets, depending on whether or not the letters Q, W, X, Y are listed, which can only be found in foreign words and traditional...
) for informal Internet and SMS
SMS
SMS is a form of text messaging communication on phones and mobile phones. The terms SMS or sms may also refer to:- Computer hardware :...
communication (similar to the use of k in Italy
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
for ch). For brevity's sake, ß (one character) becomes preferable to German ss or Hungarian sz (two characters). This usage is only passive, because autocompletion programs in mobile phones encourage users to this behaviour.
Upper case
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
in that it has no traditional upper case form. This is because it never occurs initially, and traditional German printing in blackletter never used all-caps.
There have been repeated attempts to introduce an upper case ß. Such letterforms can be found in some older German books and some modern signage and product design. Since April 4, 2008 Unicode 5.1.0 has included as U+1E9E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S.
Lowercase beta
"ß" should not be confused with the unrelated lower-case GreekGreek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
letter "β" (beta)
Beta (letter)
Beta is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiodental fricative ....
, which the so called Sulzbacher form closely resembles, particularly to the eyes of non-German or non-Greek readers. Any typeset material should use the ß; where that letter is unavailable, the substitution of "ss" for "ß" is correct, and clearly preferable to the use of Greek "β".
The differences between "ß" and "β" in most typefaces are:
- β reaches below the line while ß does not (except in some italic versions).
- β connects the vertical part on the left with the end of the horizontal near the bottom; ß does not.
- β is often slightly slanted to the right even in upright fonts, while ß is exactly vertical.
However, the reverse substitution of using German "ß" as a surrogate for Greek "β" once was common when describing beta test
Development stage
A software release life cycle refers to the phases of development and maturity for a piece of computer software—ranging from its initial development, to its eventual release, and updated versions of the released version to help improve software or fix bugs still present in the software.- Pre-alpha...
versions of application programs for older operating systems, whose character encoding
Character encoding
A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in...
s, most notably Latin-1
ISO/IEC 8859-1
ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998, Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1, is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1987. It is informally referred to as Latin-1. It is generally...
and Windows-1252
Windows-1252
Windows-1252 or CP-1252 is a character encoding of the Latin alphabet, used by default in the legacy components of Microsoft Windows in English and some other Western languages. It is one version within the group of Windows code pages...
, did not support easy use of Greek letters. Also, the original IBM DOS code page
Code page
Code page is another term for character encoding. It consists of a table of values that describes the character set for a particular language. The term code page originated from IBM's EBCDIC-based mainframe systems, but many vendors use this term including Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle Corporation...
, CP437
Code page 437
IBM PC or MS-DOS code page 437 is the character set of the original IBM PC. It is also known as CP 437, OEM 437, PC-8, MS-DOS Latin US or sometimes misleadingly referred to as the OEM font, High ASCII or Extended ASCII....
(aka OEM-US) conflates the two characters, assigning them the same codepoint (0xE1) and a glyph that minimises their differences. Though the difference between ß and β is usually obvious in some ornate serif
Serif
In typography, serifs are semi-structural details on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols. A typeface with serifs is called a serif typeface . A typeface without serifs is called sans serif or sans-serif, from the French sans, meaning “without”...
and most sans-serif
Sans-serif
In typography, a sans-serif, sans serif or san serif typeface is one that does not have the small projecting features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. The term comes from the French word sans, meaning "without"....
typefaces (where its "s" origins are more emphasized), a few fonts still use the Sulzbacher design, which renders both characters as near-homoglyph
Homoglyph
In typography, a homoglyph is one of two or more characters, or glyphs, with shapes that either appear identical or cannot be differentiated by quick visual inspection. This designation is also applied to sequences of characters sharing these properties....
s, the only noticeable difference being the descender on beta: ß β.
Also note: in German handwriting and in Fraktur, the ß is written very similar to β, reaching below the line with the bottom loop connected to the vertical line.
Uppercase B
English speakers unfamiliar with German orthography may also confuse ß with B (the Latin letter which is derived from the Greek beta), which is also incorrect. This effect is used for comic value in the film National Lampoon's European VacationNational Lampoon's European Vacation
European Vacation is a 1985 comedy film. The second film in National Lampoon's Vacation film series, it was directed by Amy Heckerling and stars Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo. Dana Hill and Jason Lively replace Dana Barron and Anthony Michael Hall as Griswold children Audrey and Rusty...
, where Clark Griswold reads a sign for Dipplestraße as Dipplestrabe around 54 minutes in.
Keyboards
Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
- OptionOption keyThe Option key is a modifier key present on Apple keyboards. It is located between the Control key and Command key on a typical Mac keyboard. There are two option keys on modern Mac desktop and notebook keyboards, one on each side of the space bar....
+s on US, US-Extended, and UK keyboards, OptionOption keyThe Option key is a modifier key present on Apple keyboards. It is located between the Control key and Command key on a typical Mac keyboard. There are two option keys on modern Mac desktop and notebook keyboards, one on each side of the space bar....
+b on French keyboard
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
- AltAlt keyThe Alt key on a computer keyboard is used to change the function of other pressed keys. Thus, the Alt key is a modifier key, used in a similar fashion to the Shift key. For example, simply pressing "A" will type the letter a, but if you hold down either Alt key while pressing A, the computer...
+0223 or AltAlt keyThe Alt key on a computer keyboard is used to change the function of other pressed keys. Thus, the Alt key is a modifier key, used in a similar fashion to the Shift key. For example, simply pressing "A" will type the letter a, but if you hold down either Alt key while pressing A, the computer...
+225 or Ctrl+s or (if not used otherwise) Ctrl+AltAlt keyThe Alt key on a computer keyboard is used to change the function of other pressed keys. Thus, the Alt key is a modifier key, used in a similar fashion to the Shift key. For example, simply pressing "A" will type the letter a, but if you hold down either Alt key while pressing A, the computer...
+s, on some keyboards such as US-International also AltGrAltGr keyAltGr is a modifier key found on many computer keyboards and primarily used to type characters that are unusual for the locale of the keyboard layout, such as currency symbols and accented letters...
+s
X-based systems
X Window System
The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
- AltGrAltGr keyAltGr is a modifier key found on many computer keyboards and primarily used to type characters that are unusual for the locale of the keyboard layout, such as currency symbols and accented letters...
+s or ComposeCompose keyA compose key, available on some computer keyboards, is a special kind of modifier key designated to signal the software to interpret the following sequence of two keystrokes as a combination in order to produce a character not found directly on the keyboard...
, s, s
GNU Emacs
- C-x 8 " s
GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
- AltGrAltGr keyAltGr is a modifier key found on many computer keyboards and primarily used to type characters that are unusual for the locale of the keyboard layout, such as currency symbols and accented letters...
+s or Ctrl-Shift-DF or (in GNOME versions 2.15 and later) Ctrl-Shift-U, df
AmigaOS
AmigaOS
AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...
- Alt+S for all keymaps on native Amiga keyboards.
Plan 9
Plan 9 from Bell Labs
Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a distributed operating system. It was developed primarily for research purposes as the successor to Unix by the Computing Sciences Research Center at Bell Labs between the mid-1980s and 2002...
- Alt or Compose, s, s.
RISC OS
RISC OS
RISC OS is a computer operating system originally developed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England for their range of desktop computers, based on their own ARM architecture. First released in 1987, under the name Arthur, the subsequent iteration was renamed as in 1988...
- AltAlt keyThe Alt key on a computer keyboard is used to change the function of other pressed keys. Thus, the Alt key is a modifier key, used in a similar fashion to the Shift key. For example, simply pressing "A" will type the letter a, but if you hold down either Alt key while pressing A, the computer...
+s or AltGr+s
The Vim
Vim (text editor)
Vim is a text editor written by Bram Moolenaar and first released publicly in 1991. Based on the vi editor common to Unix-like systems, Vim is designed for use both from a command line interface and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface...
and GNU Screen
GNU Screen
GNU Screen is a software application that can be used to multiplex several virtual consoles, allowing a user to access multiple separate terminal sessions inside a single terminal window or remote terminal session...
digraph is ss.
Other languages
'ß' is used by some in romanizingRomanization
In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
the Sumerian language
Sumerian language
Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...
, to mean 'sh'. Some Sumerian scholars use 'sz' or '$' instead.
It was also in use for Latin during the Medieval and Renaissance time, until the 18th century.
E.g.: clarißimus - clarissimus - the brightest; eße - ĕsse - to be; amavißet - amavisset and so on.
'ß' was used to mean 'š' in a German-influenced spelling system for the Lithuanian language
Lithuanian language
Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...
which was used in Lithuania Minor
Lithuania Minor
Lithuania Minor or Prussian Lithuania is a historical ethnographic region of Prussia, later East Prussia in Germany, where Prussian Lithuanians or Lietuvininkai lived. Lithuania Minor enclosed the northern part of this province and got its name due to the territory's substantial...
in East Prussia
East Prussia
East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...
: the page section Prussian Lithuanians#Personal names has some examples of Prussian Lithuanian surname
Surname
A surname is a name added to a given name and is part of a personal name. In many cases, a surname is a family name. Many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name"...
s containing 'ß'.
Miscellaneous
In alphabetizing German words, the collation rules say to treat ß as a double "s". Thus, Ruß < Russe < rußen < Russland.In word processing
Word processing
Word processing is the creation of documents using a word processor. It can also refer to advanced shorthand techniques, sometimes used in specialized contexts with a specially modified typewriter.-External links:...
contexts, ß is sometimes associated with the umlaut
Umlaut (diacritic)
The diaeresis and the umlaut are diacritics that consist of two dots placed over a letter, most commonly a vowel. When that letter is an i or a j, the diacritic replaces the tittle: ï....
, for a purely practical reason: both ß and the umlauted ä
Ä
"Ä" and "ä" are both characters that represent either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter A with an umlaut mark or diaeresis.- Independent letter :...
, ö
Ö
"Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut to denote the front vowels or . In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified .- O-Umlaut...
, ü
Ü
Ü, or ü, is a character which can be either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with an umlaut or a diaeresis...
are not in ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
. Thus they tend to cause the same kinds of problems in all sorts of legacy digital text processing applications. Historically, the development of ß is not related to the umlaut, and they are not associated outside of character encoding
Character encoding
A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in...
contexts.
ß is sometimes used in German writing to indicate a pronunciation of /s/ where /z/ would otherwise be usual (in Standard German, initial
Frankfurt (Oder)
Frankfurt is a town in Brandenburg, Germany, located on the Oder River, on the German-Polish border directly opposite the town of Słubice which was a part of Frankfurt until 1945. At the end of the 1980s it reached a population peak with more than 87,000 inhabitants...
; thus ßind ßie? ("Sind Sie?").
The HTML entity for ß is
ß. Its codepoint in the ISO 8859 character encoding versions 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16 and identically in UnicodeUnicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
is 223, or DF in hexadecimal
Hexadecimal
In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal is a positional numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16. It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols 0–9 to represent values zero to nine, and A, B, C, D, E, F to represent values ten to fifteen...
. In TeX
TeX
TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....
and LaTeX
LaTeX
LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to...
, \ss produces ß.
Also, ß (as well as Ä, Ö, Ü) is widely not considered part of the standard alphabet. If asked how many letters in the alphabet, most Germans would answer 26 instead of 30. Sometimes even 29 may be heard, if it is forgotten that the dots of ä are an old e placed over the vowel, but ß is still remembered as a ligation of sz or ss.
See also
- Capital ßCapital ßCapital sharp s is the contestable majuscule of eszett. Sharp s is nearly unique among the letters of the Latin alphabet in that it has no traditional upper case form . This is because it never occurs initially in German text, and traditional German printing never used all-caps...
- Greek letter β (Beta)
- Long sLong sThe long, medial or descending s is a form of the minuscule letter s formerly used where s occurred in the middle or at the beginning of a word, for example "ſinfulneſs" . The modern letterform was called the terminal, round, or short s.-History:The long s is derived from the old Roman cursive...
- Sz (digraph)
- Ȥ
- :de:Heysesche s-Schreibung
- :de:Adelungsche s-Schreibung
External links
- James Mosley: Eszett or ß - January 31, 2008 on typefoundry.blogspot.com
- Mark Jamra: The Eszett