Re: Ess-zed (was: Ligaturing)

From: KNAPPEN@MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE
Date: Fri Aug 22 1997 - 14:05:34 EDT


Asmus asked, concerning capital sharp S:

>Can you post evidence of their occurrence.
>Thanks,
>A./

Allthough according to the orthographical rules of the german languages,
all capital sharp s's should be represented as `SS' or in exceptional cases
(where there is a pair of words only differing in ss/sharp s) as `SZ',
you can see capital sharp s's galore in germany.

Just randomly watch shop signs (usually written in all caps), advertisements,
or other displayed material (like pie charts or bar charts in newspapers)
around in germany. Just today I saw an ad of a firm called
GEI<CAPITAL SHARP S> here in Mainz.

By the way, I cannot confirm the shape recently posted by Michael Everson,
I think he got it mirrored.

There is another reason to have a capital sharp s different from SS:
According to the traditional spelling rules the letter combination ss
resulting from sharp s must not be hyphenated, while the combination ss
(native) is almost always hyphenatable s-s.

--J"org Knappen



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