eszett

Eszett, also known as scharfes S, is a letter of the German alphabet written ß. It represents the voiceless s sound and is used in standard Latin-script German typography as a single character rather than a digraph.

The name Eszett refers to the historical origin of the character as a ligature. It developed from a combination of a long s (ſ) and another s or z in medieval and early modern typesetting. Over time, this ligature was standardized as the single letter ß. The alternative name scharfes S emphasizes its function as a “sharp” or strong s sound.

Orthography and usage rules vary by region and reform. In contemporary German, ß is used after long vowels and diphthongs (for example, Straße, Maße). After short vowels, the digraph ss is used (for example, Masse). In Swiss usage, ß is not employed, and ss is used in all cases. When writing in all caps, many systems prefer SS, though a capital ß (ẞ) exists in Unicode and is increasingly supported in modern typography.

Typography and form. ß is a ligature with a distinctive shape that has varied across typefaces and historical scripts, including blackletter and modern roman fonts. Its uppercase counterpart is ẞ in Unicode, but its use varies in practice, and some publishers still render all-caps German words with SS.

Encoding and digital usage. The lowercase ß is encoded as U+00DF. The uppercase form ẞ is encoded as U+1E9E. In HTML, the common entity is ß for ß, with numeric references available for both forms.