“ẞ” (uppercase form of “ß”) is part of the German spelling rules as of 2017

The Council for German Spelling (Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung) is an official body that was created in 2005 on the basis of the 1994 Vienna Agreement between Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Belgium, the Bozen-Südtirol autonomous provice of Italy, as well as Romania and Hungary, and includes delegates from the founding member states.

• http://www.rechtschreibrat.com/

In 2006, the Council published the first edition of the Official Rules of German Spelling (“Amtliches Regelwerk der deutschen Rechtschreibung”) — a common set of spelling Rules for the Standard German language. The Rules govern the spelling of Standard German, and include notes where local variations of German differ from Standard German (such as in case of Swiss German).

On June 29, 2017, the Council published the 2017 edition of the Official Rules of German Spelling, a comprehensive update that replaces the 2006 Rules and is a result of a five-year debate and revision process.

• http://www.rechtschreibrat.com/DOX/rfdr_Regeln_2017.pdf

One of the main novel aspects is that the letter “ẞ” (uppercase form of “ß”, Unicode U+1E9E) is now accepted as part of the Standard German alphabet and spelling.

In regular writing, the basic rule of uppercasing “ß” as “SS” remains as one possibility, but alternatively, “ẞ” can be used as the uppercase variant of “ß”. Also, the document says that “each letter exists as a lowercase and an uppercase letter”, and enumerates “ẞ” as part of the uppercase alphabet. The relevant excerpts of the new Rules and the press release issued by the Council pertaining to “ẞ” are included in the Annex.

It’s worth nothing that already in 2010, the 5th edition of the German “Toponymic Guidelines for map and other editors for international use” published by the German Federal Office of Cartography and Geodesy (Bundesamt für Kartographie und Geodäsie) made “ẞ” the preferred uppercase variant of “ß” for use in geographical names, when spelled in all caps:

Toponymic Guidelines for map and other editors for international use, 2010

(page 10)

• https://web.archive.org/web/20151227003506/http://www.stagn.de/drupal/sites/default/files/pdf/101125_TopR5.pdf

1.1.3 Special letter ẞ ß

The special letter ẞ (“strong s”) existed hitherto only as small letter (minuscule). In 2007 DIN and ISO accepted the capital letter ẞ which is rendered on position 1E9E of the Unicode character tables. In official spelling it must not be substituted by any other letter combination, as e.g. SS, ss. In the alphabetical order ẞ, ß is treated like SS, ss. Since a typographical implementation of the upper case letter ẞ in the various character fonts will take some time, it may be temporarily substituted by SS, ss.

NEW: Due to the new regulation of German spelling the letter ß is after a short (stressed) vowel now replaced by ss. The letter ß remains after a long vowel or a diphthong.

Why is “ß” needed?

The presence of the letter “ß” in the Standard German alphabet makes ortographic sense, as the letter serves and important purpose. In the 1996 spelling reform the status of “ß” as a “single letter” (rather than a ligature) has been finally confirmed. In the previous spelling, the general rule was that short vowels are denoted by following them by doubled consonant letters while long vowels are followed by single consonant letters. So writing “met” always indicates a long “e:” sound while “mett” indicates a short “e” sound.

Before 1996, the case of “s”/“ß” was confusing. Following a vowel with a single “s” always denoted a long vowel, but letter “s” by itself was an ambiguous consonant, because in German because it often stands for the “z” sound. Following a vowel with a doubled “ss” indicated a short vowel. Before 1996, following a vowel with “ß” did not give clue whether the vowel was short or long. So “Ruß” was actually pronounced “ru:s” as if the “ß” stood for a single consonant letter, but “Nuß” was pronounced “nus” as if the “ß” stood for a doubled consonant letter. The 1996 spelling removed this uncertainty by changing the spelling of all “ß” into “ss” when the preceding vowel was to be pronounced short. Today’s spelling of “Nuss” or “dass” underlines that the vowels are to be pronounced short.

• “Lusemann” is pronounced with a long “oo” followed by a “z” sound, like in the English “lose”
• “Lussemann” is pronounced with a short “u” like in English “put”, followed by an “s” sound
• “Lußemann” is the only way to unambiguously write a long “oo” followed by an “s” sound, like in the word “loose”

Swiss German is quite different from standard German. The Swiss do not use “ß”, because the Swiss German pronounciation is quite different from the Standard German spelling, but in Standard German, “ß” is very useful.

The history of “ß” is somewhat surprising. The letter developed in a two-wise way: as a ligation of long s and round (“normal”) s, and as a ligation of long s and z. The German language adopted unified spelling rules only in 1901. Before that, both in the middle ages and in the humanist period, German spelling differed much. For example, “Thor” and “Tor” were equal variants of spelling the word meaning “gate”. The “sharp s” sound was denoted by different writers differently (as ſs or ſz, which looked like ſʒ). So the graphical shape of the “ß” letter, which was originally a ligature, developed independently in these two ways.

This dichotomy still shows itself in a small minority practice of uppercasing ß as “SZ” rather than “SS”. Incidentally, this practice is understandable for most German readers (though not actively practiced), i.e. “GROSZSTADT” or “MASZGEBLICH” is understandable as the uppercasing of Großstadt or maßgeblich.

Why is the capital “ẞ” needed?

The uppercasing of “ß” as “SS” but also as “SZ” defeats the orthographic rule of long vowels being followed by a single consonant letter. If I uppercase the word “Rußpartikel” into “RUSSPARTIKEL” or even “RUSZPARTIKEL”, suddenly the natural way of pronouncing the “U” changes from short to long, so the reader is confused. Modern readers are used to “ß” being always treated as a single consonant letter, not as a ligature of a doubled consonant.

In 2004, Andreas Stötzner initiated the process of including “ẞ” in the Unicode Standard. His proposal:

• http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2888.pdf

was rejected, but in 2007, the German Standards Committee resubmitted the proposal with some amendments:

• http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/N3227.pdf

and the letter “ẞ” had been incorporated into the Unicode Standard at the codepoint U+1E9E.

How should “ẞ” be designed?

In 2006, Andreas Stötzner explored a number of possibilities for the design of “ẞ”:

• http://www.signographie.de/cms/upload/pdf/Signa9_Formfrage_SZ_2.01.pdf
• http://www.signographie.de/cms/upload/pdf/Signa9_Kombinatorik_SZ_3.0.pdf

Dr.-Ing. Rolf Böhm and Andreas Stötzner discussed the various forms in a nicely illustrated letter exchange:

• http://www.signographie.de/cms/upload/pdf/Signa9_Boehm_Formstudien_1.1.pdf
• http://www.signographie.de/cms/upload/pdf/Signa9_ZurDresdnerForm_1.0.pdf

Stötzner ended up proposing a “Dresden skeleton” (“soft+hard”) which includes a soft top-left section (similar to a reversed “J”) and a hard mid-right section (akin to a “Ʒ” shape):

• http://www.signographie.de/cms/upload/pdf/SIGNA9_SHARP_S_howto.pdf

He also proposed a “Leipzig skeleton” (“soft+soft”), with a soft top-left section and a soft mid-right section (akin to an “S” shape).

In 2007, I have reported on the standardization process. I also proposed an alternative skeleton of “ẞ”, that I have since dubbed the “Frankfurt skeleton” (“hard+hard”) — because I lived in Frankfurt (Oder) for many years. The Frankfurt skeleton is in my view more “uppercase-like” than Andreas Stötzner’s proposals, and follows the principle: has a hard top-left section (similar to a “Γ”) and a hard mid-right section (akin to a “Ʒ” shape).

• http://www.typophile.com/node/33647

When looking and the evolution of the Latin letter, edges in capitals became soft rounds in lowercase. I have found the Dresden and Leipzig skeletons somewhat unnatural and difficult to reproduce nicely in handwriting. Yet in my opinion, the “hard top-left” edge is easy, effective, and provides good distinguishability between uppercase ẞ and lowercase ß.

A number of German readers of the fontblog.de discussion in 2008 did express the preference for the “hard top-left” variants (Frankfurt and Berlin skeletons), though others prefer the “soft top-left” variants.

• http://www.fontblog.de/versaleszett-wird-internationale-norm/

Later, I have also proposed a “Berlin skeleton” (“hard+soft”), which has a hard top-left section (similar to a “Γ”) and a soft mid-right section (akin to a “S” shape).

In 2016, I have reviewed many fonts in which the designers included “ẞ”. I was happy to discover that a number of designers, including German-language native speakers (Titus Nemeth, Jan Fromm, Friedrich Althausen, Jan “Yanone” Gerner, Stefan Hoppe, and Andreas Stötzner himself) chose to use the Frankfurt or Berlin skeletons aka “hard top-left” forms in their designs:

• https://goo.gl/UZUddi

There are, of course, other fonts on the market, which follow the “soft top-left” skeleton (Dresden or Leipzig).

Since those discussion happened, I have come to believe that, as with most of the “modern" (post-classical-period) uppercase letters of the Latin alphabet, we will see some skeletal variation in “ẞ”.

While virtually all classical letters present in ancient Latin have one solid skeleton (ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPRSTVXYZ), the later additions to the Latin alphabet have a wider variation in the skeleton. “J” has a narrow descending and wide non-descending form, “U” is round on both sides or only on the left, and the two “V” shapes that form the “W” can touch or cross in several ways.

I think the same will be true for “ẞ”. I think the varying treatment of the bottom-right section in “U” (soft vs. hard) is a good example how both solutions can be considered for the top-left section of “ẞ”. I mostly prefer the hard top-left skeleton of “ẞ” because uppercase is more “static” and has generally more edges which become round in the lowecase (Aa Ee Ff Gg Hh Mm Nn Tt). But I accept arguments to the contrary (c and s are round in the lowecase but also in the uppercase).

Some further discussion links regarding the design of the letter “ẞ”:

• https://goo.gl/qHZyfT
• http://typedrawers.com/discussion/comment/28829