ß

In German orthography, the letter ß, called (, S-Z) or (, "sharp S"), represents the phoneme in Standard German when following long vowels and diphthongs. The letter-name combines the names of the letters of () and () in German. The character's Unicode names in English are double s, sharp s and eszett. The ''Eszett'' letter is currently used only in German, and can be typographically replaced with the double-s digraph if the ß-character is unavailable. In the 20th century, the ß-character was replaced with ''ss'' in the spelling of Swiss Standard German (Switzerland and Liechtenstein), while remaining Standard German spelling in other varieties of the German language.

The letter originated as the digraph used in late medieval and early modern German orthography, represented as a ligature of (long s) and (tailed z) in blackletter typefaces, yielding .{{efn|The IPA symbol ezh (ʒ) somewhat resembles the Blackletter z ($\backslash mathfrak\{z\}$) and is used in this article for convenience despite its technical inaccuracy. The preferred form of transcription by Unicode is the "hooked z" (ȥ), a toned-down version of the tailed z in 19th-century printed texts.}} This developed from an earlier usage of in Old and Middle High German to represent a sibilant that did not sound the same as ; when the difference between the two sounds was lost in the 13th century, the two symbols came to be combined as in some situations.

Traditionally, did not have a capital form, and was capitalized as . Some type designers introduced capitalized variants. In 2017, the Council for German Orthography officially adopted a capital form as an acceptable variant, ending a long debate. Since 2024 the capital has been preferred over . Provided by Wikipedia