ß

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The glyph ß is a ligature of ſ (long s) and s or z that has become a distinct letter in the German alphabet; its German name is Eszett (IPA: [ɛsˈtsɛt], lexicalized expression for sz) or scharfes S (sharp S). In German orthography, the letter alternates with ss under certain conditions, and it is replaced by ss when there is no ß available. ß is nearly unique among the letters of Latin alphabet in that it has no upper case form, since it never occurs initially (one of the few other examples is kra, which was used in Greenlandic).

Old Italian handwritten text showing an ß used as an ſs-ligature, "preßo alla" (long s followed by short s).

[edit] Origin

origins of the ligature ß

There are two origins of the ligature ß:

• Ligature ſs: a ligature of long s (ſ, looks like an f without the bar) and (normal) round s.
• Ligature ſz: a ligature of ſ and z.

The ligature of long ſ and round s was used in antiqua typefaces, for instance in English or French. It fell into disuse when the long ſ was abandoned in the 18th century.

In German blackletter typefaces, the ligature of long ſ and z was used since the Middle Ages. In the High German consonant shift, Germanic [t] became [s] or [ts]. At first, both were spelled zz, but soon, they were differentiated as ſz and tz. Originally, that s-sound was different from the old Germanic s-sound spelled ss, but this difference was lost in the Middle Ages. Therefore, the spellings ſz and ss became confused. The modern distinction between the two spellings emerged after many centuries. Until the German spelling reform of 1901, the use varied from region to region.

The usual typeface for German was blackletter. In the late 18th and early 19th century, when more and more German texts were printed in antiqua, the typesetter looked for an antiqua counterpart of the blackletter ſz ligature because they wanted to preserve the common distinction between ſz and ss. The preservation of this difference in antiqua typefaces became obligatory with the German spelling reform of 1996.

The typographer Jan Tschichold claimed that the German blackletter ß originated as a ligature of ſ and s. His view is widespread, even though historical linguists say that there's no argument to support it. Tschichold's claim is based on a picture drawn by himself that illustrates how blackletter ſ and s melt together, and on a reference to the ſs-ligature in antiqua. A historical specimen of the former has never been found, and the latter is unrelated to the origin of the German blackletter ſz ligature.

different forms of antiqua ß

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 is seldom found.

1. letter combination ſs (not as a ligature, but as a single type),
2. ligature of ſ and s,
3. ligature of ſ and a kind of blackletter z that looks similar to an "ʒ" (ezh) or a "3", though it might rather be described as a "hooked z" (ȥ) (this solution resembles the original blackletter ligature),
4. a ligature ſ and a kind of 3 so that the ligature resembles a Greek β (a compromise of the second and the third solution).

"ß" in the form of a "ſz" ligature on a street sign in Berlin ("Petersburger Straße"). The sign on the right ("Bersarinplatz") ends with a tz-ligature.

"ß" as the combination of "ſs" on a Pirna street sign ("Waldstraße")

[edit] Usage in German

Since the German spelling reform of 1996, either ß or ss is used for the representation of an /s/ in a syllable onset (where a normal s would be pronounced /z/) as follows:

1. ß is used after long vowels, for instance in grüßen (‘to greet’), and for consistency also in the related words grüßt (‘greets’), grüß! (‘greet!’);
2. ß is used after diphthongs, for instance beißen (‘to bite’) or in the related words beißt (‘bites’), beiß! (‘bite!’);
3. ss is used after short vowels, for instance küssen (‘to kiss’) or in the related words küsst (‘kisses’), küss! (‘kiss!’).

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’).

[edit] Substitution and all caps

If no ß is available, ss is used instead. This applies especially to all caps or small caps texts because ß does not have a 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 may be hyphenated, for instance Stras-se (‘street’); compare Stra-ße.

[edit] Switzerland and Liechtenstein

In Switzerland 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, you can always write ss’). Many people graduating from Swiss schools do not know when the convention in Germany and Austria requires ß, even though they have ready access to German books and internet sites.

The ß has been gradually abolished since the 1930s, when most cantons decided not to teach it any more and when the Swiss postal service stopped using it in place names. In 1974, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung was the last Swiss newspaper to give up the ß. Today, the ß is used only by major Swiss publishing houses for books that address the entire German-speaking market.

One reason for the abolition of the ß may have been the increasing use of typewriters. Since Swiss typewriters were designed to be usable in the German speaking part of Switzerland as well as in French speaking part, they contained accented French letters (ç, à, é, è) as well as German umlauts (ü, ä, ö) and consequently had no key to spare for ß.

[edit] Usage before the spelling reform of 1996

Before the German spelling reform of 1996, there was an additional rule that “ß” should be used at the end of a word (e.g. naß, 'wet') or word-component (e.g. Naßrasur, 'wet shave'), or before a consonant (e.g. wäßrig, 'watery'), even if it follows a short vowel, but must otherwise be replaced by “ss” (e.g. Wasser, 'water'). As a result, floss ('flowed') was formerly spelled floß, and the spelling Floß was ambiguous between a capitalised floss (with short vowel) and the noun Floß ('raft', with long vowel — all nouns are capitalised in German).

The spelling reform also affected certain place names, e.g. "Rußland" (Russia) became "Russland", and "Preßburg" (Bratislava) became "Pressburg"; the English and French used Pressburg as the name of the city anyway, until the use of Bratislava became common in the decade after the independence of Czechoslovakia.

The pre-1996 orthography encouraged the use of SZ in all caps texts in cases where SS would produce an ambiguous result, as with "IN MASZEN" (in limited amounts; "Maß"=measure) vs. "IN MASSEN" (in massive amounts; "Masse"=mass). The number of such cases was so small that this rule was more confusing than helpful, thus it has been dropped. Only in the German military is the capitalization SZ still in occasional use, even when there's no ambiguity — e.g. boxes inscribed SCHIESZGERÄT (“shooting materials”) can still be found occasionally. The same is true for architectural drawings, which often use capital letters and where both "MASZE" and "MASSE" are quite frequent. sz is also still used for ß in military teletype operation within Germany.

upper case ß in the 1957 Duden of Leipzig

There have been repeated attempts to introduce an upper case ß. One of the best known examples is the Eastern German 1957 Duden. A recent proposal to the Unicode Consortium for capital double s by Andreas Stötzner was rejected in 2004, on the basis that capital ß is a typographical issue, and therefore not suitable for character encoding.

[edit] ß and β

"ß" should not be confused with the lowercase Greek letter beta ("β"), which it closely resembles, particularly to the eyes of non-German or non-Greek readers, but to which it is unrelated. Indeed the resemblance is not close enough to enable substitution of the one with the other in typeset material without the result looking extremely unprofessional, comparable to substituting lowercase Greek letter omega ("ω") for "w" in English text. Any typeset material should use the ß; where that letter is unavailable, the substitution "ss" for "ß" is correct and clearly preferable to the use of Greek beta.

The differences between "ß" and "β" in most typefaces are:

• β reaches below the line while ß does not, except in handwriting.
• β connects the vertical part on the left with the end of the horizontal near the bottom; ß does not.
• β uses Greek rules of stroke thickness (slanted strokes are thinnest), ß uses Latin rules (horizontal strokes are thinnest).
• β is often slightly slanted to the right even in upright fonts, while ß is exactly vertical.

However, such substitution once was common when describing beta test versions of application programs for older operating systems, such as classic Mac OS, whose character encodings did not support easy use of Greek letters. Also, the original IBM DOS code page, CP437 (aka OEM-US), which was designed by English speaking persons with limited knowledge of German spelling customs, conflates the two characters, assigning them the same codepoint (0xE1) and a glyph that minimises their differences.

Also note that in German handwriting, the ß is written very similar to β, slightly slanted and reaching below the line.

[edit] On keyboards

The ß key (and Ä, Ö, Ü) on a 1964 German typewriter

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, but not on Microsoft Windows computers. The details of the keyboard layout depend on the input language and operating system.

Macintosh

Option+s

Microsoft Windows

Alt+0223 (on the numeric keypad), Alt+225 (also on the numeric keypad)

X-based systems

AltGr+s or Compose, s, s

GNU Emacs

C-x 8 " s

GNOME

Ctrl-Shift-DF or (in GNOME versions 2.15 and later) Ctrl-Shift-U, df

The Vim and GNU Screen digraph is ss.

[edit] Miscellaneous

When ordering German words alphabetically, the collation rules say that "ß" should be treated as if it were a double "s". So, for example: "Ruß" < "Russe" < "rußen" < "Russland".

In Word processing contexts, the "ß" is sometimes associated with the umlaut, for a purely practical reason: both the "ß" and true umlauts (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 with the umlauts, and they are not associated outside of character encoding contexts.

The ß is sometimes used in German writing to indicate the pronunciation of an s-sound where the letter s would be pronounced otherwise; an initial s in German is pronounced much like the letter z in English. The novels NeuLand and OstWind by Luise Endlich, for example, use an initial ß to approximate the local dialect in Frankfurt (Oder); thus ßind ßie? ("Sind Sie?").

The ß is also used by some in romanizing the Sumerian language, in which it represents sh. Some Sumerian scholars use sz or $ instead.

The ß character is popular in Hungarian "text speak" used with mobile phones, replacing the grapheme sz, thus using one letter fewer in the SMS. For the same reason, some Swiss Germans also use it for any ss in a SMS.

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 Unicode is 223, or DF in hexadecimal.

[edit] External links

• Andreas Stötzner: Capital Double S. Proposal to the Unicode Consortium (pdf)