ßvariant

ßvariant is a term used in typography and German orthography to refer to the different glyphic and orthographic forms associated with the German letter ß (Eszett, scharfes S). The concept encompasses both the historical origins of the character and its contemporary digital representations.

In modern German, ß represents the /s/ sound after long vowels or diphthongs, while the digraph ss is used after short vowels. This distinction affects spelling rather than pronunciation, and it varies with word structure and historical rules. Swiss German generally uses ss in all cases, avoiding ß entirely.

Typographic variants of the ß arise from differences among typefaces and scripts. In traditional blackletter and Fraktur, the ß often has a distinctive curving form, while antiqua (serif and sans-serif) fonts standardize a more uniform shape. The ß itself is typically lowercase; its uppercase counterpart was historically avoided in favor of SS in all-caps contexts.

Unicode and encoding details clarify the variant forms. The lowercase ß is encoded as U+00DF. The uppercase form ß, known as ẞ (Latin capital letter sharp S), is encoded as U+1E9E and is increasingly supported in modern fonts and systems. In many applications, all-caps text still maps ß to SS, though the dedicated uppercase ß is gaining acceptance in typography and digital text.

See also: Eszett, ligature, German orthography, Unicode.