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ℝ

S (/[invalid input: 'icon']ˈɛs/; named ess; es- when part of compound word, plural esses^[1]) is the nineteenth (19th) letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.

History

Phoenician shin	Etruscan S	Greek Sigma

Semitic Šîn ("teeth") represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ (as in ship). Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma (Σ) came to represent /s/. In Etruscan and Latin, the /s/ value was maintained, and only in modern languages has the letter been used to represent other sounds.

The minuscule form of s was ſ, called the long s, up to the fifteenth century or so, and the form 'S' was used then only asss" didn't become widespread in print until the beginning of the 19th century, largely to prevent confusion of 'ſ' with the lower case f in typefaces which had a very short horizontal stroke in their lowercase 'f'. The ligature of ſs (or ſz) became the German ess-tsett, ß.

Usage

The letter S represents the voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/ in most languages and IPA; it also commonly represents the voiced alveolar fricative /z/, as in the Portuguese mesa or the English does. It may also represent the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative [ ʃ ], as in Portuguese, Hungarian, and German (before p, t). The letter S is the seventh most common letter in English and the third-most common consonant (after t and n).

In English, final ⟨s⟩ is the usual mark of plural nouns, and of third person present tense verbs.

Related letters and other similar characters

Σ σ : Greek letter Sigma
С с : Cyrillic letter Es
Ц ц : Cyrillic letter Tse
ẞ ß : German Eszett or "sharp S"
ſ : Latin letter Long S
ʃ : IPA letter Esh (used in the International Phonetic Alphabet for the voiceless postalveolar fricative)
∫ : integral symbol
Ѕ ѕ : Cyrillic letter Dze
SH Sh sh : Latin digraph Sh
Ƨ ƨ : Latin letter Reversed S (used in Zhuang transliteration)
$ : dollar sign
§ : Section sign

Computing codes

character	S		s
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S		LATIN SMALL LETTER S
character encoding	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	83	0053	115	0073
UTF-8	83	53	115	73
Numeric character reference	S	S	s	s
EBCDIC family	226	E2	162	A2
ASCII ASCII ¹	83	53	115	73

¹ and all encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

Other representations

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Sierra	▄ ▄ ▄ ^ⓘ

		File:Sign language .svg	File:BSL letter .svg
Signal flag	Flag semaphore	American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling)	British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling)	Braille dots-234 Unified English Braille

References

^ "S" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "ess," op. cit.

External links

Media related to S at Wikimedia Commons
The dictionary definition of S at Wiktionary
The dictionary definition of s at Wiktionary

[1] "S" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "ess," op. cit.

[1]

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-{{other uses of}}
+ℝ{{other uses of}}
 {{Hatnote|Due to [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)|technical restrictions]], '''ſ''' ([[long s]]), '''S#''' ([[Script.NET]]), and '''S#arp''' ([[S♯arp]]) redirect here.}}
 {{pp-move-indef|small=yes}}
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 [[File:Historical usage of long s.svg|500px|thumb]]
-The [[lower case|minuscule]] form of ''s'' was ſ, called the [[long s|long ''s'']], up to the fifteenth century or so, and the form 'S' was used then only as upper case, just like 'G' and 'A' were only upper case. With the introduction of printing, the modern form ''s'' began to be used at the end of words by some printers. Later, it was used everywhere and eventually spread to manuscript letters as well. For example, "sinfulness" would be rendered as "ſinfulneſſ" in all medieval hands, later it was "ſinfulneſs" in some blackletter hands and in print. The modern usage "sinfulness" didn't become widespread in print until the beginning of the 19th century, largely to prevent confusion of 'ſ' with the lower case ''[[f]]'' in typefaces which had a very short horizontal stroke in their lowercase 'f'. The ligature of ſs (or ſz) became the [[German language|German]] ''[[ess-tsett]]'', ß.
+The [[lower case|minuscule]] form of ''s'' was ſ, called the [[long s|long ''s'']], up to the fifteenth century or so, and the form 'S' was used then only asss" didn't become widespread in print until the beginning of the 19th century, largely to prevent confusion of 'ſ' with the lower case ''[[f]]'' in typefaces which had a very short horizontal stroke in their lowercase 'f'. The ligature of ſs (or ſz) became the [[German language|German]] ''[[ess-tsett]]'', ß.
 == Usage ==