Council for German Orthography officially allows use of u+1E9E
From the Rat für Rechtschreibung’s third official report (in German; see p. 7/8):
http://www.rechtschreibrat.com/DOX/rfdr_Bericht_2011-2016.pdf
What’s new here is that this is no longer merely recommends the cap eszett as a valid alternative for proper names but makes it a sanctioned alternate spelling in general orthography. In addition to official documents and forms (where personal names need to be capitalized) the report also highlights the usefulness in advertising and editorial settings, explicitly citing existing usage.
I find it heartening to see that after the initial push to get this into Unicode, type design and typography practice can come together to raise awareness and have a real impact on how language lives. Congratulations and thanks, once again, to @Andreas Stötzner especially.
Comments
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I'm glad tp see this, as I've been including this letter in my glyph sets for some time.
After reading Typography.Guru's Capital Sharp S article years ago, I was convinced there was some validity to it's inclusion.
https://typography.guru/journal/germanys-new-character/
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It’s been ten years since we all first started putting this in our fonts.
Always a fascinating and engaging design task to draw!
Thanks, Andreas, and Adam Twardoch too was instrumental in the initial discussions at Typophile, IIRC.4 -
I always firmly believed that it was a right thing to go for. My studies of the past combined with my observations of the present made me thinking that way. Among many other aspects I appreciate very much that international experts encouraged that endeavour and also that font designers outside Germany – like you Nick – picked up the idea and made it happen.
( "weep" ) – thank you especially @Nina STÖẞINGER (!) for those words!
(I’m proud to have been one of your tutors, once
)
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GROẞARTIG!
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Best font news in a while!1
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A proper name should be presented properly ;-)
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My best wishes and GRÜẞE aus Ladenburg... preusss2
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The Typedrawers typeface appears to be lacking this important character!
(And if substituted from another font, why in bold?)2 -
“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.
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.
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)
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:
was rejected, but in 2007, the German Standards Committee resubmitted the proposal with some amendments:
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):
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).
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.
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:
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”:
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Annex
Council for German Spelling 2007 press release
Das amtliche Regelwerk der deutschen Rechtschreibung wird seit seiner Inkraftsetzung im Jahre 2006 zum zweiten Mal aktualisiert und behutsam modernisiert. Die Änderungen nehmen Entwicklungen aus dem beobachteten Sprachgebrauch auf. Sie schaffen mit der Zulassung des Großbuchstabens „ẞ“ eine Wahlmöglichkeit, neben der die Schreibung mit „SS“ für „ß“ bei der Schreibung in Großbuchstaben erhalten bleibt.
(translation)
Since its inauguration in 2006, the official rules of German spelling have been updated for the second time and carefully modernized. The changes take developments from the observed language usage. The changes provide a choice by authorizing the uppercase letter “ẞ” as an alternative to continued use of “SS” when “ß” is written in capital letters.
Official Rules of German Spelling, 2007
(page 15)
A Laut-Buchstaben-Zuordnungen
0 Vorbemerkungen(1) Die Schreibung des Deutschen beruht auf einer Buchstabenschrift. Jeder Buchstabe existiert als Kleinbuchstabe und als Großbuchstabe:
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ä ö ü ß
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Ä Ö Ü ẞDie Umlautbuchstaben ä, ö, ü werden im Folgenden mit den Buchstaben a, o, u zusammen eingeordnet; ß nach ss. Zum Ersatz von ß durch ss siehe § 25 E2. Zur Schreibung von ß bei Schreibung mit Großbuchstaben siehe § 25 E3.
(page 29)
2.3 Besonderheiten bei [s]
§ 25 Für das scharfe (stimmlose) [s] nach langem Vokal oder Diphthong schreibt man ß, wenn im Wortstamm kein weiterer Konsonant folgt.
Das betrifft Wörter wie: Maß, Straße, Grieß, Spieß, groß, grüßen; außen, außer, draußen, Strauß, beißen, Fleiß, heißen. Ausnahme: aus.
Zur Schreibung von [s] in Wörtern mit Auslautverhärtung wie Haus, graziös, Maus, Preis siehe § 23.
E1: In manchen Wortstämmen wechselt bei Flexion und in Ableitungen die Länge und Kürze des Vokals vor [s]; entsprechend wechselt die Schreibung ß mit ss. Beispiele:
fließen – er floss – Fluss – das Floß
genießen – er genoss – Genuss
wissen – er weiß – er wussteE2: Steht der Buchstabe ß nicht zur Verfügung, so schreibt man ss. In der Schweiz kann man immer ss schreiben. Beispiel: Straße – Strasse
E3: Bei Schreibung mit Großbuchstaben schreibt man SS. Daneben ist auch die Verwendung des Großbuchstabens ẞ möglich. Beispiel: Straße – STRASSE – STRAẞE.
(translation)
(page 15)
A Sound-letter assignments
0 Preliminary remarks(1) German spelling is letter-based. Each letter exists as a lowercase letter and as an uppercase (capital) letter:
A b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ä ö ü ß
A B C D E F G H I Y C L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A Ö Ü ẞIn the following rules, the umlaut letters ä, ö, ü are now grouped together with the letters a, o, u; ß after ss. For the replacement of ß by ss see § 25 E2. For the spelling of ß with uppercase letters see § 25 E3.
(page 29)
2.3 Peculiarities of [s]
§ 25 Write ß for the sharp (voiceless) [s] after a long vowel or diphthong if there is no further consonant in the stem.
This applies to words such as: measure, Maß, Straße, Grieß, Spieß, groß, grüßen; außen, außer, draußen, Strauß, beißen, Fleiß, heißen. Exception: aus.
For the spelling of [s] in words with final hardening like Haus, graziös, Maus, Preis see § 23.
E1: In some word stems, the length and brevity of the vowel preceding [s] changes; the spelling uses ß or ss accordingly. Examples:
fließen – er floss – Fluss – das Floß
genießen – er genoss – Genuss
wissen – er weiß – er wussteE2: If the letter ß is not available, write ss. In Switzerland you can always write ss. Example: Straße – Strasse
E3: When writing with uppercase letters, write SS. Alternatively, you can also use the capital letter ẞ. Example: Straße – STRASSE – STRAẞE.
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I’ve made a sample selection of fonts available on MyFonts that include the uppercase ẞ. Very subjective. The list of fonts is included below.
1. Grotesks / Geometric Sans: Helvetica, Neue Haas Unica, FF Real, Marat Sans, Figgins Sans, Proxima Nova, Cera, Quasimoda2. Humanist / Rational Sans: Komet, Lemance, Secca, Urby, Branding, Camphor, Verdana, Foco3. Modern Sans: Daytona, Boxley, Siro4. Semisans: Conglomerate, Fertigo, Gitan5. Oldstyle Serif: Le Brush, Andron, Calluna, Essay Text, Garvis, Goodchild, Garibaldi, Alegreya6. Humanist Serif: Tuna, Andada, Marco, Andigo, Inka, Schuss Serif, Nassim, Mantika7. Pointed Serif: Amster, Nocturne Serif8. Modern Serif: Scotch Modern, Prillwitz, Richler, Deca Serif, Tenez9. Slab, Hernandez, Graublau Slab, Sanchez, Columbia Titling, FF Hertz, Liebe Ruth, Alianza Slab, Novecento Slab, DIN Next, Canape, Lenga, Yorkten, Tabac Slab, Rooney, Camingo Slab, Mayonez10. Display, Numina, Battista, Urbis, ARB Moderne, Rachele, Broken Gothic, Iogen, FF Fontesque, FF Mach, FF Antithesis6 -
Very interesting line-up! But as I've mentioned on Typografie.info, most of those samples strike me as ungainly or hard to read.
In my very subjective opinion, the ideal ẞ (which I'm calling the Zürich form) has the following properties:- The top left is round. I can't help but read the /Γ-shaped versions as a /T_Z ligature. However, the stem should turn into the round curve relatively high up, well above the middle, so as to lend the stem its proper stability.
- Instead, I recommend a hard corner on the top right, close to or at cap height. Round domes that curve down from the apex in both directions tend to produce a glyph that looks too small among the other capitals.
- The structures on the right-hand side should follow a strong vertical line and not deviate from it too abruptly. Once of the most widespread features of ugly /ẞ designs is a hideous axe-cleft in the middle that introduces a hodge-podge of ill-fitting diagonals and vandalizes the counter. Instead, the counter should remain as a single visual body so as to differentiate from /B as clearly as possible.
- Designs with closed bottoms or descenders should be avoided as a rule.
- The /ẞ is a wide character, certainly wider than /B. It should be given proper space, or it will look cramped.
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Christian,
even though your Traction solution looks a bit too "lowercasey" for my eyes, generally, I like this skeleton. One of my problems with the most common renditions of the Dresden skeleton was that it was very oddly asymmetric, and the counters weren't properly balanced. Many Dresden-style ẞ letters keep falling over to the right. But your forms, especially those in Cormorant and Quinoa, "stand on both feet". To me, this is an essential property of all uppercase letters.
I definitely support your notions that ẞ should be a "wide" letter — especially in typefaces where the uppercase has classical proportions (width alternating between square and half-square).
I think even with your solution to the right side of ẞ (which I like), I imagine that the top-left corner can have an edge (and a serif if needed). Then of course, the whole form might need to be a tad narrower. But overall — uppercase letters need visual solidity, and your solution does provide that! Thanks 2 -
In a way, I consider my "Frankfurt" or "Berlin" skeletons "safer". The top-left corner is a "safe" solution and is not "wrong". Finding the "right" curve (arc) if one wants to go in the direction that Christian is proposing (an opened-up Dresden or Leipzig form) may be difficult. It's possible to find one (like Christian did in Cormorant), but if you cannot find a graceful curve there that fits the overall concept, don't make a shitty curve but do a corner instead.
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Here's my point put into pictures:
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I support the approach to do the cap sharp s wider too. For me the cap sharp s needs to be wider than cap B. Only on very narrow or monospaced designs it should be narrow too. Here are some of my samples of the last years.
I'm surprised of the "new and creative" names for these forms.
Did we really need more town names? - If so, I call my form "Dresden/Cottbus".
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We probably don't urgently need the names, but if we want to refer to a coherent bundle of design aspects that take a paragraph to describe otherwise, I'd say a name comes in handy.andreas said:I'm surprised of the "new and creative" names for these forms.Did we really need more town names? - If so, I call my form "Dresden/Cottbus".
A lot of these names have already been established early in the effort to make the character official, so there's «historical» precedent there. Given that there's a name for the Zehlendorf-variant of the Leipzig approach (as introduced in the German federal government's house font), and my preferred design is essentially the vector addition of the Leipzig→Zehlendorf movement to the Dresden base, I feel defining an analogous name for that variant is justified. (I'd also argue that Zürich and Zehlendorf look different enough to warrant a distinction.)
Which of these designs would you call Cottbus? They look quite different to me. Some of them even conform to the Zürich philosophy (bottom left).
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We could standardize the use of the "Zxxxx" names for the "wide forms with open counters": Zehlendorf, Zürich, Zottbus
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Adam, great stuff! Thank you.
And your collection really helps a great deal.
Christian, I like your forms, although in certain designs a hard top-left would be better.
I actually think a descender (possibly even on the right side) should not be rejected. The space is already almost always used by the "Q" (and often the "J") and it would help it be less a "B", more itself.
BTW, I think using city naming is cool. And romantic.
So, descending left is the Assen form and descending right is Memmingen? :-)0 -
Adam, Hrant: I can't get myself to read an ẞ with a hard corner in the top left as an ẞ. That corner is alien to the design of ß and works against intuitively identifying the ẞ as its capital form. As I keep mentioning, it rings the TZ ligature bell in my mind:
(Typeface: Camphor)
I'm sure I'm not the only one.
I also doubt it would pair well with the Zehlendorf/Zürich right-hand side, since the whole thing would end up very Π-shaped then.
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I admit to having no feeling for the potential "reading as TZ" aspect. If anything I would think a hard top-left might make it too a "B" (where a descender would help even more actually). But I do think it makes it feel much more formally uppercase. BTW to me looking like the capital of ß is not critical; readers will get it immediately, and adapt without even realizing.
Maybe a soft top-right would pair well with a hard top-left. And maybe soft as in fully round all the way to the bottom-right component (although then it might be way too much a "B").0 -
I've made the Quinoa implementation every so slightly narrower, since many felt it was too wide. It starts to look worse when I make it narrower than that.
I'm reposting the image for reference/linking purposes. Better to use an optimized shape, I guess.
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@Christian Thalmann Is this all just your opinion or can you cite sources? I wonder if it’s a little early to make proclamatory “Bad”/“Good” diagrams. We’re all still figuring out how to draw this best; I would think a number of the points you raise depend on the design and the overall style (like the curvature on top). At least put into such general terms, I would disagree on a couple of the points you raise:
- Width. I used to err on the side of making this wide simply because it is so busy and has kind of a lot going on. But then again, so do Bs and Rs. Certainly in a design with oldstyle-type variance in capital widths I believe it makes more sense to think of the 1E9E as a narrower letter, orienting itself towards the B and R and E and S, rather than the U / O etc. I can’t quite tell what cap width pattern your design here follows, it looks like everything is kind of wide, so in this context I agree the “Bad” one is a little narrow, but I don’t think it needs to compensate quite as far. It’s easier to make it wider, but making it not too wide and also not appear too busy is one of the things that make this an interesting challenge to draw. (I do agree with minding the clearances, especially in the bottom.)
- Articulating the right-side profile. Your “ugly” is another person’s “legible”, and I would advise against watering down the features that most clearly make this what it is. If you personally prefer this aesthetically that’s fine, but I don’t think it should be a universal rule for everyone to follow in each kind of design. Personally I don’t think it fits very well here — in your “Good” example I would also expect perhaps an E with a very short center crossbar and other surprisingly/quaintly “shy” details, but with such a bold R leg and such chunky proportions, I would think there’s really no reason to skimp on the explicit-ness of this gesture.
9 - Width. I used to err on the side of making this wide simply because it is so busy and has kind of a lot going on. But then again, so do Bs and Rs. Certainly in a design with oldstyle-type variance in capital widths I believe it makes more sense to think of the 1E9E as a narrower letter, orienting itself towards the B and R and E and S, rather than the U / O etc. I can’t quite tell what cap width pattern your design here follows, it looks like everything is kind of wide, so in this context I agree the “Bad” one is a little narrow, but I don’t think it needs to compensate quite as far. It’s easier to make it wider, but making it not too wide and also not appear too busy is one of the things that make this an interesting challenge to draw. (I do agree with minding the clearances, especially in the bottom.)
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Hoi Nina,Is this all just your opinion or can you cite sources?Yes, it's my personal opinion, though based my own gradually evolved efforts to make the character look good in my typefaces. My earliest attempts echoed the unsatisfactory designs seen in many, if not most, common typefaces, and I found the strategies detailed in my «recipe» the most successful antidotes. I'd like to make those strategies available to those who have similar dissatisfactions with the commonly found design so as to save them some time, and perhaps sensitize them to the problem in the first place.I wonder if it’s a little early to make proclamatory “Bad”/“Good” diagrams.I'm sure it's too early to carve them into stone, but I would expect it's a good way to drive the discourse forward!
As for the issues you raised:- I don't subscribe to any a priori philosophical imperative that the glyph ought to be particularly wide, but I have yet to see a design that shares the width of /B and manages to look distinctly /ẞ-like as opposed to /B-like. To me, the unbroken channel of whitespace in the counter of /ẞ is one of its defining characteristics, inherited from the Cancellaresca-style /ß whose genome it appears to carry. (I realize there are /β-like designs for /ß that break that whitespace, but those are decidedly inappropriate for /ẞ due to the competition with /B.) At the same time, the horizontal motion on the right side must be significant enough to evoke the complexity of /ß. Trying to combine these two features harmoniously naturally leads to a glyph wider than /B in my opinion/experience. The need for a bottom terminal clearly separated from the stem only adds to that tendency. The width difference is often less pronounced than in my Quinoa sample, but nevertheless unavoidable (IMHO):
- I don't think of Quinoa's /ẞ as timid at all. I see the counter as its main identifying feature, and it is very prominent. The sigmoid shape on the right side is also far from subtle IMHO. I don't think sacrificing some counter area in favor of more horizontal motion would render it more legible, though I'd be very interested to see some research about that...! Regardless, most of the designs with strong horizontal excursions look exaggerated and disharmonious to me, often comically so. There's something about that unanchored sequence of curve-diagonal-curve that feels like a ransom letter pieced together from a newspaper. Emphasizing the vertical motion and damping the back-and-forth motion greatly helps to reduce this impression.
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Here is one of mine from a few years ago:
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Two questions about the “ß”.
(1) Should there be (within one font family) a relationship between the lowercase design and the uppercase design of the “ß”? Do the different designs of the lowercase “ß” which exist, require some difference in the design of the corresponding uppercase “ẞ”? This is not about the small details of the design, but about variations in the general shape of the design (Gill Sans, Consolas, Arial):
E3: When writing with uppercase letters, write SS. Alternatively, you can also use the capital letter ẞ. Example: Straße – STRASSE – STRAẞE.(2) What would be the best way to implement this in the OpenType features to create All Caps/Small Caps/All Small Caps? When using OpenType features to create uppercase from lowercase, should “SS” be the standard uppercase form of “ß”, and should a Stylistic Set be used to switch to the alternative form “ẞ” (except for Swiss German)?
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If you think about the capital "A" vs the lowercase "a", the relationship which existed years ago, when lowercase was invented, is very difficult to see in today's modern version. This leads me to believe that the need for rigid formal relationship between cases is not a requirement. Once a form is established to a point that it is recognizable to that language's readers, it is free to evolve as it might.1
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I think Ben is asking about what I would call idiomatic relationship, rather than direct relationship between upper and lowercase form. So, for example, in the lowercase, different shapes are associated with oldstyle and with romantic type idioms. I understand Ben to be asking if the same can be said regarding different forms of the uppercase. It's a good question. There is, of course, much less precedence, and the earliest forms of uppercase eszett, as far as I know, are a little less than 140 years old.0
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I'd also like to point out that many of these historic, pre-official versions of ẞ look reasonably good, fit well into context, and are instantly legible without requiring a national re-education program. I guess most of those are lettering rather than type, but there's absolutely no reason why the same shouldn't be achievable in type. The problem is not just solvable; it has been solved many times over.John Hudson said:There is, of course, much less precedence, and the earliest forms of uppercase eszett, as far as I know, are a little less than 140 years old.
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