Capital ẞ

The large ß - ẞ - (also: versales ß, large bedrooms, large sharp s ) is the uppercase form of the small letter ß ( sharp s ). It is not part of the officially binding German spelling. About a recording of this letter in the German alphabet is discussed since the late 19th century. In early 2008, large ß was added as a new character in the Unicode international standard for computer character sets, on 24 June 2008 entered the corresponding amendment to the standard ISO / IEC 10646 in power.

• 6.1 Historical writings
• 6.2 computer fonts

Problem

The beta comes in any historical or current standard spelling of the Germans before the word beginning. Therefore, the question of its uppercase form is only if all the words are written in upper case ( majuscule ). Until the early 20th century, the German language was primarily written and set in which only rarely capitals were used to typestyle for practical and aesthetic reasons in blackletter; usual was the lock record. A greater demand for a large ß until the beginning of the 20th century, was set as a German language propagated in Antiqua Therefore emerged. The all-caps font award was becoming more common in headlines, billboards, signs, tombstones, certificates and the like. be used. In the absence of a capital letter which remains ß receive either a lowercase letter in the versal, or it is replaced by the pairs of letters "SS" or " SZ ".

Capital letter ß

Proposals to introduce a Majuskelform for Eszett in Antiqua set, there was since 1879, as such in the Journal were published for the art of printing.

In the dictionary of 1925, the need for a standardization of a large ß was formulated:

" The use of two letters for one sound is only a stopgap measure, which must stop as soon as a suitable pressure point is created for the large ß. "

The title of the GDR -Duden of 1957 and 1960 ( 15th edition ) showed a large Eszett for spelling but was still above rule.

In the sixteenth edition of 1969, nor the development of a large "ß" was promised:

" The letter ß unfortunately still missing as a capital letter. It is now replaced by SS or, if misunderstandings are possible by SZ. Efforts to make it, are in progress. "

In the 25th edition of 1984, lacked such a notice, the words " not yet " in the first sentence and " now " in the second were deleted:

" The character ß is missing as a capital letter. It is replaced by SS or, if misunderstandings are possible by SZ. "

Versal without capital ß

The current official rules for the new German orthography know no uppercase letters for ß: " Each letter exists as a lower-case letter and a capital letter ( except ß ) ". In the versal recommend the rules, to be replaced by "SS" "ß ": " In the letter case letters to write SS, for example: road - ROAD. " The Standing Committee on Geographical Names has, however, decided in 2010, the official use of the large prescribe ß, but looks for the meantime until further dissemination of the letter in pleadings continue replacing with " SS ss" before.

The replacement rules for the versal changed over the last hundred years. The German spelling of 1901 replaced the Eszett by " S" and " Z". So was " Prussia " the versal to " PREUSZEN ". During the 20th century, but became common more and more a replacement with "SS". The development of spelling rules in the West German Duden reflects the coexistence of the two forms. Shortly before the spelling reform of 1996, the spelling " SZ " was only possible in exceptional cases, when would a replacement by "SS" confusion. Thus, " mass " to " MASS ", but " dimensions" to " MASZE ". The GDR editions of the dictionary from 1969 and 1984 made ​​only with misunderstandings such a distinction and speak otherwise for " SS " from: " ROAD, coat-tails; IN MASSES comrades, better here: IN -fertilized ENJOYED ".

The new German spelling has been writing since 1996 for the versal the uniform replacement of Eszett by the double letters "SS" before, according to the traditional normal use. A distinction made ​​between ' mass ' and ' Dimensions ' is no longer possible in the versal.

The replacement of the Eszett by other capitals for proper names in particular leads to ambiguities. The name "WHITE " could stand for " white" or " white " are, the name " Liszt " for " Liszt " or " Liszt". Therefore emerged as an third possibility of the mixing rate. The Eszett is not replaced. The name "white" is versal in the mixed set to " WHITE ". This notation has been used since the 1980s in the non- machine-readable portion of the German passports and identity cards, if the name is set in all caps, but on the other hand, a correct reproduction of the "original spelling" seems important. The machine-readable section, however, the ß replaced by SS. The German Post AG recommends maintaining the Eszett when filling out forms in capital letters.

From a typographical point of view here the imbalance of the typeface is criticized because the shapes of the upper and lower case letters of the font used in a rule in width, height and line thickness.

The executive director of the Council for German Orthography Dr. Kerstin Güthert justified the Council's attitude to the great ß with the words: "It is [ ... ] a question that is unanswered for decades and it will probably remain so for some time also. The reason is that it is not for the Council for German Orthography to invent characters. Its task is to monitor the case and to ensure that rules and write use be consistent. We therefore need an initiative from the writing community (eg on the part of typographers ) to create here on the basis of a social consensus remedy. " ( Kerstin Güthert )

Design of the new letter

A higher aesthetic standards as regards documents consists in typographic text set in company names, billboards and even in inscriptions where also the correct name should remain strictly preserved.

Such designs have been around since the late 19th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, some well-known type designers as Ehmcke, Belwe, Erbar or Schneidler created in their fonts a versales Eszett.

It's been a long and intense discussions (and sometimes still is) how this new character should be shaped. There are V.A. the following approaches:

• Large ß modeled on the small ß, adjust the character proportions to the other capitals;
• Large Eszett form as ligature of the uppercase SS or SZ;
• Large Eszett, as entirely new form, based on S and Z
• Large Eszett as an S with a diacritical mark (similar to some or the Ç Á );

The difficulty consists in the Vereinung different requirements that are imposed on the letter and that are perceived as partly contradictory:

• The form should be < immediately understood by the > normal font users without special knowledge as ß;
• The form should blend harmoniously into the Latin Versalalphabet;
• The form should be sufficiently distinguishable both from the common beta and from the large B.

Computer Set

For the computer set there is now a certain choice of fonts with large Eszett. Major obstacle for the practical use was a long time that every manufacturer has the character coded differently. Since April 2008, the Eszett is added to the Unicode standard. Windows 7 provides some system fonts (see below) with supporting ẞ.

Unicode

In 2004 she applied to the typographer Andreas Stötzner, publisher of SIGNA, the Unicode Consortium to receive a Latin Capital Letter Double S in Unicode. The application was rejected due to technical reasons - and because the existence of this letter was not sufficiently proven.

A second request for a recording of the great ß as "Latin Capital Letter Sharp S" was made by the competent committee DIN 2007. As part of the 50th meeting of the relevant ISO / IEC Working Group from 23 to 27 April 2007 the large ß further addition "has been the number U 1 E9E in Unicode block » Latin assigned. On 4 April 2008 the large ß The Unicode Standard Version 5.1 was released. However, the standard algorithm for conversion to uppercase on walking the little " ß" into "SS".

At the same time develops the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative character assignments for medievalists. In the current version 3.0 of this standard, the above specified Unicode code point is recommended for large ß; in the previous version 2.0 from the year 2006, however, was still coded as U E3E4, since it was not included at this point in Unicode.

Keyboard Layout

With the keyboard layout T2 according to the revised German Standard DIN 2137:2012-06 the characters with Alt Gr h is entered. It should be noted that in contrast to an input other capitals the Shift ⇧ must not be operated simultaneously. This explains the fact that the combination is ⇧ ß is for the question mark, and that it was a design requirement for the T2 - occupancy, that neither in the predecessor standard (that is, in the current occupancy T1) defined character assignment changed, even a new button could be added, and that the large ß should be enterable without group change. Thus, to be entered with Alt Gr position had to be used. To avoid confusion with the lowercase ß, aware of the latter a distant location was chosen.

A font to be used for the correct screen that contains the character.

For the input in Mac OS X and Windows special keyboard drivers are available.

In newer versions of the German standard key assignment of X11, which is used by most Linux distributions, it seems, if you have the Caps Lock key ( ⇩ ) is activated and pushes the ß key. In older versions you had to press ⇧ AltGr S. This combination is also still possible.

The Neo keyboard layout used to enter the large ß with ⇧ ß and Windows allows ⇧ AltGr ß key to enter the large ß.

Selected writings with great ß

A number of historical and contemporary writings contain a large ß.

For newly developed or revised writings, it is increasingly taken into account.

Historical writings

Computer fonts

• Windows 7: Times New Roman, Arial, Courier New, Tahoma, Verdana, Segoe UI, Segoe UI Light, Segoe UI Semibold.
• Windows 8: How to Windows 7, in addition Cambria, Calibri, Candara, Consolas, Constantia, and Corbel
• Mac OS X: Geneva
• Free fonts: DejaVu package, Linux Libertine and Linux Biolinum, Junicode

Others

Founded in 2008, Giessen newspaper contains a large ß in newspaper head.