Talk:Capital ẞ

Current Situation
Actually today June 29 2017 the " Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung" presented the official capital Eszett in german orthography. http://www.rechtschreibrat.com/DOX/rfdr_PM_2017-06-29_Aktualisierung_Regelwerk.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.126.22.226 (talk) 12:39, 29 June 2017 (UTC)


 * That's right. In the new Regeln und Wörterverzeichnis capital ẞ is mentioned in rule 0 (on page 15) as being a German capital letter as well as in rule 25 E3 (on page 29): "Bei Schreibung mit Großbuchstaben schreibt man SS. Daneben ist auch die Verwendung des Großbuchstabens ẞ möglich. Beispiel: Straße – STRASSE – STRAẞE." — I think the new regulations came into effect on June 27. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 13:12, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Capital ß
Maybe someone should work ẞ (capital ß) in the article? RedNifre 00:25, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Merge with ß?
Should this article be merged with ß? - &#9993; Hello World! 16:43, 24 October 2007 (UTC)


 * No. --> Talk:ß --plauz (talk) 14:57, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
 * yes. It should be split off under WP:SS after it becomes too long for a section, not because it might possibly become too long one day. --dab (𒁳) 10:31, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * No, since it is a new character which stands for itself. --Frakturfreund (talk) 13:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That's no argument. We don't have separate entries for "b" and "B" or for "w" and "W", so why should this capital letter get a different article? +Angr 13:14, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * No. There are big differences between the lower-case ß and its upper-case brother: for one, the first is an established letter that is in use for a logn time while the other is still in an experimental state; secondly the capital ß does not relate to the lowercase ß in the way a relates to A - the correct capitalisation of ß is still SS. I really would keep these articles separate. --Sascha.leib (talk) 20:43, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Fonts rendering ẞ
Is "ẞ" really supposed to be a capital ß? On my browser it looks like a thin capital S with a cedilla (a thinner and slightly taller Ş). Is it supposed to look like that or do I need a new font? - MTC (talk) 20:52, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
 * ẞ is indeed the capital ß, but it isn't "official" yet. The Unicode consortium decided that ẞ will be the capital version of the sharp s in the next revision of unicode. However, some font designer already added a glyph for capital sharp s to U+1E9E, so when you install such a font you should see ẞ as a real capital sharp s.


 * And I dont know why you see a strange S in your browser. On my own computer I see it as a capital sharp s (because I have the right fonts) and on the computer I use right now I see it as a box with "1E9E" written in it, which is officially no character yet, but will be capital s in the next unicode version. You are probably using a low quality browser. I recommend using Opera (powerful browser right out of the box) or Firefox (lightweight browser that you can customize). 130.83.161.3 (talk) 13:26, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I am already using Firefox, which fonts already have the capital ß? - MTC (talk) 07:49, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Linux Libertine works well on my Mac. --plauz (talk) 14:59, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Linux Libertine can't seem to be installed on Windows. I eventually discovered that a new version of Code2000 has it, though Code2000 is still very ugly. ẞ is now also appearing correctly in the wikitext and edit summary box in a different font to Code2000, I'll have to work out which font that is. - MTC (talk) 06:00, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
 * You'll find a rather conclusive font list in the German version of this article: Versal-ß. If you can live a with an all-cap font, Stötzner's free Eszett-… fonts might be sufficient for you. Some weights of Jos Buivenga's Anivers and Museo are also availalbe for free. --plauz (talk) 19:32, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm currently (January 2009) using the MacOSX default version of "Helvetica" and am surprised that it indeed supports the capital sharp ẞ. (as does the default "Courier" version used for editing...) -- megA (talk) 22:12, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I cannot get it to appear as anything but a blank box. 164.107.196.134 (talk) 04:00, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, is ẞ meant to look like the image of the letter in the picture? i.e. Like a fatter ß with a sharp bit at the top. Because on my computers it looks like two capital letter Ss Like so; SS. Though in the google box it only shows up as a box, and here while editing as a narrow box. Perhaps it should be replaced with an image of the actual glyph at the beginning of the article, as it would seem confusing or misleading for anyone seeing something other than the letter intended. The code could be included later in the article with a explanation.Number36 (talk) 20:29, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Guardian article misleading
The recently added Guardian link, added in good faith, appears misleading to me. It seems so imply that the letter ß (as opposed to merely the capital version of it) has been recently added ot the ISO standard / Unicode, which is, of course, patent nonsense; the small letter has been part of the Unicode standard for a long time. The headline "More than just a pumped up B': Germany celebrates recognition of the letter ß", particularly, is particularly misleading, but the way the whole article is worded seems to indicate that this is in fact a significant misunderstanding by the reporter (or editor) rather than just sloppy writing. Though the misunderstanding could probably have been avoided by consulting Wikipedia, perhaps the Wikipedia articles on ß and Capital ß should be edited to make it even clearer that the letter ß (Unicode U+00DF) has been standard for a long time and only Unicode U+1E9E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S is new. I have, therefore, removed the link. English newspapers do not appear to be a very reliable source of information on German orthography. --Boson (talk) 11:36, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

"Contestable"?
What is this intended to mean? It looks like translationese to me. "Debatable"? "Contested"? Chronodm (talk) 16:09, 26 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreed. They probably meant "controversial". I've removed it, as it has no basis in the original German article or in the sources, as far as I can see.  it's amazing it lasted all this time.  Mathglot (talk) 22:24, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Stefan Kießling
The spelling of Stefan Kießling's name on his German team shirt in the FIFA World Cup 2010 appears to use a capital ß. I haven't seen his Bayer 04 Leverkusen shirt. FIFA's World Cup website gives his name as "Stefan Kiessling", but by the same token it has Thomas Müller as "Thomas Mueller" even though his shirt has the umlaut present and correct. jnestorius(talk) 16:44, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You mean as in this image? I think it's just an ordinary ß written in an all-caps context, which is commonly done for proper names, though not for common words. In other words, I think it says KIEßLING rather than KIEẞLING. +Angr 20:15, 27 June 2010 (UTC)


 * In that case the current statement "If you use all-caps, the current spelling rules require to replace the ß with SS." is misleading. There is a related but different statement in the other article: "Excepted are all caps names in legal documents; they may retain an ß to prevent ambiguity, e.g., HANS STRAßER.". The all-caps complications are another reason for merging this article into ß. jnestorius(talk) 16:12, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

capricious image
I commented it out now since ‘nobody’ seriously uses that glyph shape. I do have some sympathy for this kind of nonsense, though. Anothername (talk) 19:47, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Mac OSX...
I'm not quite sure about the statement "On Mac OS X 10.6 version only one font includes it, Geneva Regular." My MacOSX's Character Palette for 10.5 gives Code2000 as the only one supporting capital ß (Geneva doesn't work), whereas my 10.6 Character Palette gives Geneva and another one called "Quivira"... Or does the sentence mean "from the fonts shipped directly with OSX, only Geneva includes it"? -- megA (talk) 19:41, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

ẞ Part of the Official German Spelling?
http://141.74.33.52/stagn/Portals/0/101125_TopR5.pdf

Acording to this official document (Page 10) it includes the ẞ and says DIN recognized it as an official character in 2007. --Blocoverde (talk) 20:00, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Just FRG?
The article states,

However, in 2010 the use of the capital sharp s became mandatory in official documentation when writing geographical names in all-caps.

The source provided is a document produced by the government of the FRG. Is this also binding on Austria or Liechtenstein? (I presume it is not on Switzerland.) 50.193.171.69 (talk) 17:16, 5 March 2013 (UTC)


 * The document is valid for the "Deutsche Sprachraum" and not only for the FRG, although the document itself mentions specific exceptions, such as "In der Schweiz kann man immer ss schreiben" in sect. 26; and some regions have opted out of the recommendations, fully or in part, and I believe Liechtenstein is one of them. Mathglot (talk) 23:21, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Capital ẞ. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20120125014532/http://www.neue-rechtschreibung.de/regelwerk.pdf to http://www.neue-rechtschreibung.de/regelwerk.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 12:29, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Origin of the Eszett
In the ligature article, there is a statement that:

"There is no general consensus about its history. Its name Es-zett (meaning S-Z) suggests a connection of "long s and z" (ſʒ) but the Latin script also knows a ligature of "long s over round s" (ſs). The latter is used as the design principle for the character in most of today’s typefaces."

This statement would seem to conflict with the opening paragraph of this article. So one of these articles needs to be revised in favor of whichever is correct. GeoffreyZanders (talk) 03:43, 15 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Good point. I gather that strictly speaking $\langleſʒ\rangle$ are not the correct Unicode characters and the original digraph should be encoded as $\langleſȥ\rangle$, even though the glyphs used often resembled $\langleſʒ\rangle$. Later Ȥ|Medieval German $\langleȥ\rangle$ came to be written as an $\langles\rangle$ so the resultant digraph was $\langleſs\rangle$. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 14:36, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Does this symbol need it's own article?
Especially now that it's been officially adopted into the German alphabet, I think it's worth asking whether having a separate article on capital Esszett is really warranted. It does not follow the practice of other letter forms.--Ermenrich (talk) 16:17, 13 January 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree we should follow the practice of other letter forms and merge the articles. However the "officially adopted" argument seems a difficult one as the status of capital ẞ is still quite exceptional: 1. It does not follow the same rules as other capital letters or its small counterpart. 2. It is never required, not even in Germany and Austria. 3. It is so rare you can read a zillion pages without ever coming across it 4. It is not present on common keyboards, and nobody seems to miss it. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 17:13, 13 January 2020 (UTC)