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{{Hatnote|Due to [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)|technical restrictions]], '''ſ''' ([[long s]]), '''S#''' ([[Script.NET]]), and '''S#arp''' ([[S♯arp]]) redirect here.}} |
{{Hatnote|Due to [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)|technical restrictions]], '''ſ''' ([[long s]]), '''S#''' ([[Script.NET]]), and '''S#arp''' ([[S♯arp]]) redirect here.}} |
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[[File:Historical usage of long s.svg|500px|thumb]] |
[[File:Historical usage of long s.svg|500px|thumb]] |
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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 |
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. |
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== Usage == |
== Usage == |
Revision as of 05:18, 24 February 2012
ℝ
ISO basic Latin alphabet |
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AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz |
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 |
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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 |
References
- ^ "S" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "ess," op. cit.