ß

The ß ? Eszett (IPA {{IPA|/?s?ts?t/}}) in German or scharfes S (sharp S) if spelled out ? is a letter used only in the German alphabet. It alternates with ss under certain conditions, and it is replaced by ss when there is no ß available. ß is nearly unique among the letter of Latin alphabet in that it has no upper case form since it never occurs initially (one of the few other examples is kra, used in Greenlandic).

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". Some people sort "ß" like a single "s" but this is not recommended.

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In text 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 digital text processing applications. Historically, the development of "ß" is not related with the umlauts, and they are not associated outside of text processing contexts.

Related Topics:
Text processing - Umlaut - ASCII

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

Related Topics:
Romanizing - Sumerian language

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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. Many Swiss Germans also use it for any ss in SMS.

Related Topics:
Hungarian - Text speak - Mobile phone - Grapheme

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The HTML entity for "ß" is &szlig;.

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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.

Related Topics:
ISO 8859 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 9 - 10 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - Unicode - Hexadecimal

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On Windows computers with an American keyboard, the ß can be typed by holding Alt, typing either 0223 or 225 on the right number pad, and then releasing Alt (depending on the selected input language and on the code page)*. On Macintosh computers with an American keyboard, the ß can be typed by holding Option and pressing the "s" key.

Related Topics:
Windows - Code page - Macintosh

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On X-based systems, ß can be entered in numerous ways depending on the keyboard layout. Commonly, pressing AltGr + s or typing Compose, s, s works.

Related Topics:
X-based systems - AltGr - Compose

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The Vim digraph is ss.

Related Topics:
Vim - Digraph

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• On European keyboards only holding Alt and pressing "0223" in sequence works. That is, assuming the keyboard does not have ß on it already.