15

The ß glyph is a lowercase letter that represents a ligature between a long s (ſ) and a round s, and is still used today in (some versions of) German. Its uppercase equivalent is two characters instead of one: SS.

It was apparently also once used in just the same way English, but I cannot find just exactly when or where. Was it used in manuscripts only, or in printed books too? During what time period would this have run? If in print, was it done only in blackletter faces in English, or was it also done in the less German-looking ones?

Somewhat related is the question What animal is a “weefil”?.

Elements In Space
  • 189
tchrist
  • 134,759
  • 1
    What sort of evidence do you have that it was once also used in English? (presumably not actual text) – Mitch Jan 02 '13 at 17:32
  • @Mitch If you look at the letter reproduced below, it was clearly used there. – tchrist Jan 03 '13 at 06:46
  • When you wrote the original question, had you seen for yoirself such a thing or had you only heard about it? – Mitch Jan 03 '13 at 12:15
  • @Mitch I had seen it before, yes. It was not just some hypothetical. – tchrist Jan 03 '13 at 12:21
  • If you do a full-text search in the OED you get two results of it used as a single character. One is probably a 2007 typo for beta, but I'm not sure about the other from 1726: "Tartar prepared with Nitre ℥i. Orange Pills ℥ß. Infuse them in a Pint of Parsly-Water." – Hugo Jan 05 '13 at 08:17
  • @tchrist this is wrong, ß is the ligature of a long ſ and a z (the German name gives it away, too: Eszett) ... meanwhile a capitalized version of ß also exists, but doubling the S is arguably more common. It would make sense that it has been used like this in English, because in typographers would use the same rules to set a ligature of ſ and z. As they do nowadays for fi and other letter combinations. – 0xC0000022L Jun 03 '20 at 08:36
  • 1
    Researching this, I think your question makes an assumption that is wrong. And that assumption is that ß is identical to a ſs ligature, which it's not. They look similar, but so does the Greek letter β. Somehow I get the feeling that this is somewhat similar to how people these days use Y when attempting to style something as old, just because the written from of þ somewhat resembles/resembled the written form of y. But I'd love to get authoritative references to sources contradicting me. – 0xC0000022L Jun 03 '20 at 09:53

6 Answers6

10

If this source is to be believed, the German Eszett is an intentional, early 20th century borrowing into Antiqua from Fraktur of a ligature of ſ and z — whether or not, in any given font, the Eszett resembles the ſ-s ligature is apparently purely a matter of typographical taste.

As for the ſ-s ligature itself, it would have been in use only as long as long s was in use, which seems to have been until the early 19th century.

EDIT: If Wikipedia’s to be believed, what I wrote above is wrong, and Andrew Leach should be correct that the ſ-s ligature had fallen completely from favour in English, at least by the 18th century. However, that ligature does seem to have seen use in English in the 16th and 17th centuries, if only in the italic not roman. See here, under “Rules for Long S in Early Printed Books” for examples, where “the True Copie of a Letter from the Qveenes Maiestie, London 1586” featured below is discussed. Note the ſ-s ligatures here:

The True Copie of a Letter from the Qveenes Maiestie, London 1586

tchrist
  • 134,759
Branimir Ćaćić
  • 1,350
  • 9
  • 21
  • Another cool thing here is "bleſ-ſing" split across two lines at the bottom using double long S. This proves that it really was a ligature in the other words. – Laurel Jun 04 '23 at 17:36
8

1870 U.S. census, population schedules. NARA microfilm publication M593, 1,761 rolls. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.Minnesota census schedules for 1870. NARA microfilm publication T132, 13 rolls. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.Longhand "sharp s" was still utilized during the late 19th century in the American Midwest. As you can see from the attached 1870 US Federal Census, the census enumerator on lines 38 and 39 scribed "Melissa" and "Clarissa" as Malißa (sic) and Clarißa.

M.H. Mann
  • 81
  • 1
  • 1
  • Wow! Very impressive find! – tchrist Feb 12 '14 at 23:51
  • 1
    These do not look like sharp S but more like long S. This is especially clear in “Harneſs Maker”. And interesting the inconsistencies. “Maliſsa” and “Clariſsa”, and “Harneſs Maker” – but “Missouri”. Also no long S in “Millersburg”, “Reason”, “Rosetta”, “Teamster”, or “English Township”. – MetaEd Feb 13 '14 at 00:07
  • @MetaEd I don't know for English, but going by the German rules for the long ſ Millersburg would be perfectly right, because it's a compound word from Millers (s is at the end) and burg. Reason however should be Reaſon and I also think Rosetta should use a ſ. Teamster seems right again, though, because of the t that follows (special rule as far as I'm aware). I wonder what the rules for the long ſ in English are/were. – 0xC0000022L Jun 03 '20 at 09:28
8

The ß ligature was used as part of the apothecaries' system of weights and measures used throughout Europe. Often Latin was used as the lingua franca, but it was also used in English medical recipes.

Here's an example from Sir John Floyer's A Treatise Of The Asthma (1726):

Tartar prepared with Nitre ℥i. Orange Pills ℥ß. Infuse them in a Pint of Parsly-Water.

The funny z-squiggle (℥) is the apothecaries' ounce sign (Unicode hexadecimal: 0x2125). The i is the Roman numeral for one, and ß is from ss meaning semis, or a half. This recipe requires tartar prepared with one ounce of nitre and half an ounce of orange peels.

From Wikipedia:

There was a technical reason why 3 ʒ was written ʒiij, and 1⁄2 ʒ as ʒß or ʒss: The letters "ss" are an abbreviation for the Latin "semis" meaning "half," while the Sharp S ("ß") is an abbreviation for "ss." In Apothecaries' Latin, numbers were generally written, in Roman numerals, immediately following the symbol. Since only the units of the apothecaries' system were used in this way, this made it clear that the civil weight system was not meant.

Hugo
  • 67,535
6

I'm a bit late to this, but the ß was used on the letterhead of the Clarendon Press [Preß] at Oxford in 1963. I can't say I've ever seen another example in 20th-century English.

Here's a picture:

Laurel
  • 66,382
Brian Glover
  • 61
  • I'm not convinced. Sure, this looks like an ß. But by all accounts of non-German speakers so does the Greek β. I think this is indeed a stylized ligature of ſ and s used for typographical purposes, but unrelated to ß. As far as I know the ß came about as a ligature of ſ and ʒ (the former being a long s and the latter being a z closer to its form in Fraktur). But obviously if you'd want to create a ligature between long ſ and s the above would be the outcome, given the Roman typefaces. I just wonder if there's an actual relation between what seems to be ſ-s and ſ-ʒ. – 0xC0000022L Jun 03 '20 at 09:34
  • 1
    Even the Germans didn't use the modern form of the eszett before 1903. See Wikipedia. – Peter Shor Jun 03 '20 at 11:26
  • 1
    @PeterShor which isn't surprising, because most of the books of the era and earlier are typeset in Fraktur. And in Fraktur there was simply no need for the modern form, which came about when the ſʒ-ligature was "ported" to Antiqua (Roman typefaces). Personally I have not seen a single German book that wasn't set in Fraktur from around 1930 and before (and I own quite a few). But they probably exist. – 0xC0000022L Jun 04 '20 at 06:46
6

The ß ligature was never used in English typography, even when the long s was customary, for example when it was followed by a short s at the end of a word like Congress (see the US Bill of Rights).

Long S in US Bill of Rights

The long s–short s combination was always set as two separate characters, ſs, and although some Continental type founts combined them into a single glyph, it wasn't used in English printing.

Wikipedia has rather a nice illustration showing how ſs became a ligature and adopted its current customary shape. Shape 3 is still often seen (for example on German street signs), and shape 2 is still available in some typefaces.

Development of SZ ligature

0xC0000022L
  • 914
Andrew Leach
  • 101,901
  • 6

  • It is not absolutely true that the long s--short s ligature was never used in English---16th and 17th century examples of this, albeit in italics, can be found here, under "Rules for Long S in Early Printed Books": http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Blog/2006/06/rules-for-long-s.html

    1. and 4. are not long s--short s ligatures, but rather Antiqua adaptations of a long s--z ligature in Fraktur, at least if the account I linked to is to be believed.
    • – Branimir Ćaćić Jan 02 '13 at 16:37
  • @BranimirĆaćić That blog post doesn't illustrate an ſs ligature -- plenty of others, but not ſs, which rather proves my point. The rules for German spelling and the modification/reuse of ſs for ſz are not relevant (although I thought that the development of ſs as an Antiqua ligature was interesting). – Andrew Leach Jan 02 '13 at 16:47
  • Take a look at the excerpts from "The True Copie of a Letter from the Qveenes Maiestie" (1586) and "Micrographia" (1665): the former definitely has witneße and goodneße and thankfulneße and bleßings, whilst the latter definitely has Addreß. To be fair, the use of ß does seem to be rather sporadic. As for examples 3. and 4., those are very specifically forms of the German Eszett, and are thus ligatures of ſ and s only in so far as the German Eszett is. – Branimir Ćaćić Jan 02 '13 at 16:53
  • I can't find the ligature in Micrographia. As for the Letter, I'd like to know where and when that edition was printed. – Andrew Leach Jan 02 '13 at 17:02
  • 2
    The Letter is a pamphlet printed in London in 1586, if the website is to be believed. As for Micrographia, look at the very first sentence: "AFter my Addreß to our Great Founder..." – Branimir Ćaćić Jan 02 '13 at 17:09
  • Links would be useful! – Andrew Leach Jan 02 '13 at 17:12
  • 1
    The same article as before, http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Blog/2006/06/rules-for-long-s.html, under "Rules for Long S in Early Printed Books." – Branimir Ćaćić Jan 02 '13 at 17:14
  • 3
    I walked past the site of Shakespeare's Globe theatre this weekend (here: http://goo.gl/maps/kIKcn). I noticed one of the maps reproduced on the information boards has a building labelled "Eßex House". Next time I'm nearby I'll check the date. – misterben Jan 02 '13 at 17:26
  • 1
    It looks like @BranimirĆaćić is right, that it really was used in English at some point, and for some period. – tchrist Jan 02 '13 at 20:52
  • I’m afraid, Andrew, that the evidence does seem to show that it did get used, at least during some parts of the 16th century, although certainly not everywhere nor necessarily all that consistently. The “rules for long s” referenced above really are quite interesting. – tchrist Jan 03 '13 at 06:44
  • 1
    @tchrist nope, I think you're wrong and you're conflating things here. The image - taken from Wikipedia (I edited in a link and hope it gets approved) - shows two different things in Roman typefaces: ſs as separate letters, ſs as a ligature (that's - I believe - the actual one you were after, not ß!) and the sz-ligature from the Fraktur typeface "translated" into Roman typeface to become ſʒ and the modern form ß derived from that ſʒ ligature. To confuse things further the article conflates the ss and ß spelling for Straße/Strasse which have been used at different times. – 0xC0000022L Jun 03 '20 at 09:42