ß (majuscule: ẞ) is a letter of the German alphabet. In German it is called (, ) or (, ). It represents the phoneme in Standard German when following long vowels and diphthongs. In English, it is called double s, eszett, or sharp s. It is currently used only in German, and can be typographically replaced with the double-s digraph if the character is unavailable. In the 20th century, was replaced with in the spelling of Swiss Standard German (Switzerland and Liechtenstein), while remaining Standard German spelling in other varieties of the German language.
The letter originated as the digraph used in late medieval and early modern German orthography, represented as a ligature of (long s) and (tailed z) in blackletter typefaces, yielding . This developed from an earlier usage of in Old and Middle High German to represent a sibilant that did not sound the same as ; when the difference between the two sounds was lost in the 13th century, the two symbols came to be combined as in some situations.
Traditionally, did not have a capital form, and was capitalized as . Some type designers introduced capitalized variants. In 2017, the Council for German Orthography officially adopted a capital form as an acceptable variant, ending a long debate. Since 2024 the capital has been preferred over .
Name The letter-name combines the names of the letters () and () in German.
Usage Current usage In standard German, three letters or combinations of letters commonly represent (the voiceless alveolar fricative) depending on its position in a word: , , and . According to current German orthography, represents the sound : when it is written after a diphthong or long vowel and is not followed by another consonant in the word stem: , , , [Exceptions: and words with final devoicing (e.g., )]; and when a word stem ending with takes an inflectional ending beginning with a consonant: , .
In verbs with roots where the vowel changes length, this means that some forms may be written with , others with : , , .
The use of distinguishes minimal pairs such as (, ) and (, ) on the one hand ( vs. ), and (, ) and (, ) on the other (long vowel before , short vowel before ).
Some proper names may use after a short vowel, following older orthography; this is also true of some words derived from proper names (e.g., , , named after Ernst Litfaß).
If no is available in a font, then the official orthography calls for to be replaced with . Since 2024, when writing in capital letters, is preferred, but may be used instead. Previously, was the preferred form.
In pre-1996 orthography
According to the orthography in use in German prior to the German orthography reform of 1996, was written to represent : word internally following a long vowel or diphthong: , ; and at the end of a syllable or before a consonant, so long as is the end of the word stem: , , . In the old orthography, word stems spelled internally could thus be written in certain instances, without this reflecting a change in vowel length: (from ), (from ), and (from ), (comparative: ). In rare occasions, the difference between and could help differentiate words: (expiration of a pass) and (appropriate).
As in the new orthography, it was possible to write for if the character was not available. When using all capital letters, the pre-1996 rules called for rendering as except when there was ambiguity, in which case it should be rendered as , e.g. ( "in moderate amounts") vs. ( "in massive amounts").GROSZ, GRÖSSER, am GRÖẞTEN: Der Duden und das große Eszett.
Switzerland and Liechtenstein In Swiss Standard German, usually replaces every . "Warum die Schweizer weiterhin kein Eszett schreiben." in Die Neuregelung der deutschen Rechtschreibung. Begründung und Kritik. Gerhard Augst, et al., eds. Niemayer: 1997. (Archived.)"Rechtschreibung: Leitfaden zur deutschen Rechtschreibung." Schweizerische Bundeskanzlei, in Absprache mit der Präsidentin der Staatsschreiberkonferenz. 2017. pp. 19, 21–22. This is officially sanctioned by the reformed German orthography rules, which state in §25 E2: "" ("In Switzerland, one may always write 'ss'"). Liechtenstein follows the same practice. There are very few instances where the difference between spelling and affects the meaning of a word, and these can usually be told apart by context."Rechtschreibung: Leitfaden zur deutschen Rechtschreibung." Schweizerische Bundeskanzlei, in Absprache mit der Präsidentin der Staatsschreiberkonferenz. 2017. pp. 21–22.
Other uses
Occasionally, has been used in unusual ways: As the Greek lowercase (beta). The original IBM PC CP437 contains a glyph that minimizes their differences placed between (alpha) and (gamma) but named "Sharp s Small". Substitution was also done using other character sets such as ISO/IEC 8859-1 even though they contain no other Greek letters. The lowercase eszett has also been misused as in scientific writing and vice versa. In Prussian Lithuanian, as in the first book published in Lithuanian, Martynas Mažvydas' Simple Words of Catechism, as well as in Sorbian (see example on the left). For sadhe in Akkadian glosses, in place of the standard , when that character is unavailable due to limitations of HTML. The letter appeared in the alphabet made by Jan Kochanowski for the Polish language, that was used from the 16th until the 18th century. It represented the voiceless postalveolar fricative () sound. It was for example used in the Jakub Wujek Bible. Some authors have used it in German at the beginning of words to transcribe the voiceless s of certain accents.For example Ssein, ja ßein soll es ßie, ßie, ßie! in
History Origin and development
As a result of the High German consonant shift, Old High German developed a sound generally spelled or that was probably pronounced and was contrasted with a sound, probably pronounced (voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant) or (voiced alveolar retracted sibilant), depending on the place in the word, and spelled . Given that could also represent the affricate , some attempts were made to differentiate the sounds by spelling as or : (), (), (). In Middle High German, simplified to at the end of a word or after a long vowel, but was retained word internally after a short vowel: () vs. () and ().
In the thirteenth century, the phonetic difference between and was lost at the beginning and end of words in all dialects except for Gottscheerish. Word-internally, Old and Middle High German came to be pronounced (the voiced alveolar sibilant), while Old and Middle High German continued to be pronounced . This produces the contrast between modern standard German and . The former is pronounced and comes from , while the latter is pronounced and comes from .
In the late medieval and early modern periods, was frequently spelled or . The earliest appearance of ligature resembling the modern is in a fragment of a manuscript of the poem Wolfdietrich from around 1300. In the Gothic book hands and bastarda scripts of the late medieval period, is written with long s and the Blackletter "tailed z", as . A recognizable ligature representing the digraph develops in handwriting in the early 14th century.
By the late 1400s, the choice of spelling between and was usually based on the sound's position in the word rather than etymology: () tended to be used in word final position: (, ), (, ); () tended to be used when the sound occurred between vowels: (, ). While Martin Luther's early 16th-century printings also contain spellings such as (), early modern printers mostly changed these to : . Around the same time, printers began to systematically distinguish between (the, that [pronoun]) and (that [conjunction]).
In modern German, the Old and Middle High German is now represented by either , , or, if there are no related forms in which occurs intervocalically, with : (), (), and ().
Standardization of use The pre-1996 German use of was codified by the eighteenth-century grammarians Johann Christoph Gottsched (1748) and Johann Christoph Adelung (1793) and made official for all German-speaking countries by the German Orthographic Conference of 1901. In this orthography, the use of was modeled after the use of long and "round"-s in Fraktur. appeared both word internally after long vowels and also in those positions where Fraktur required the second s to be a "round" or "final" s, namely the ends of syllables or the ends of words. In his Deutsches Wörterbuch (1854) Jacob Grimm called for or to be written for all instances of Middle and Old High German etymological (e.g., instead of from ); however, his etymological proposal could not overcome established usage.
In Austria-Hungary prior to the German Orthographic Conference of 1902, an alternative rule formulated by Johann Christian August Heyse in 1829 had been officially taught in the schools since 1879, although this spelling was not widely used. Heyse's rule matches current usage after the German orthography reform of 1996 in that was only used after long vowels.
Use in Roman type
In early modern Latin type (antiqua), a ligature similar to modern developed out of a long s followed by a round s (), and as such was used in languages such as Italian in alternation with , usually based on requirements of space on the page. However, despite its resemblance to the modern , this ligature was not commonly used as an equivalent to the Fraktur in German. This ligature generally fell out of use in the eighteenth century, together with the use of long s in antiqua. German works printed in Roman type in the late 18th and early 19th centuries such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte's did not provide any equivalent to the .
Jacob Grimm began using in his (1819); however, it varied with word internally. Grimm eventually rejected the use of the character; in their (1838), the Brothers Grimm favored writing it as . The First Orthographic Conference in Berlin (1876) recommended that ß be represented as – however, both suggestions were ultimately rejected. 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 "Sulzbacher form". In 1903, it was proclaimed as the new standard for the Eszett in Roman type.
Until the abolition of Fraktur in 1941, it was common for family names to be written with in Fraktur and in Roman type. The formal abolition resulted in inconsistencies in how names are written in modern German (such as between Heuss and Heuß).
Abolition and attempted abolitions The Swiss and Liechtensteiners ceased to use in the twentieth century. This has been explained variously by the early adoption of Roman type in Switzerland, the use of typewriters in Switzerland that omitted in favor of French and Italian characters, and peculiarities of Swiss German that cause words spelled with or to be pronounced with gemination. The Education Council of Zürich had decided to stop teaching the letter in 1935, whereas the Neue Zürcher Zeitung continued to write until 1971. Swiss newspapers continued to print in Fraktur until the end of the 1940s, and the abandonment of ß by most newspapers corresponded to them switching to Roman typesetting.