For "ſ", see Long s. For "S#arp", see S♯arp. For other uses, see S (disambiguation).

S
Basic Latin alphabet
Aa Bb Cc Dd   Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv   Ww Xx Yy Zz

S is the nineteenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ess or occasionally es (IPA: /ɛs/), generally es- when part of a compound word, plural esses.^[1]

History

Proto-Semitic ?	Phoenician S	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/. The name "sigma" probably comes from the Semitic letter "Sâmek" (fish; spine) and not "Šîn". In Etruscan and Latin, the [s] value was maintained, and only in modern languages has the letter been used to represent other sounds, such as voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ] in Hungarian and German (before p, t) or the voiced alveolar fricative [z] in English, French and German (in English rise; in French lisez (="read" imperative plural); in German lesen (="to read").

Care must be taken for incompletely anglicized words from German and proper names from that language. The trigraph "sch" is pronounced like the English digraph "sh." When S is followed either by a p or t, it is pronounced with the same "sh" sound, but when starting a word followed by a vowel, it is pronounced like the English "z," (not the German one).

An alternative form of s, ſ, called the long s or medial s, was used at the beginning or in the middle of the word; the modern form, the short or terminal s, was used at the end of the word. For example, "sinfulness" is rendered as "ſinfulneſs" using the long s. The use of the long s died out by the beginning of the 19th century, largely to prevent confusion with the minuscule f. The ligature of ſs (or ſz) became the German ess-tsett ( ß ).

In a high-school biology textbook used in the 1960s, a text discussing the discovery of cells in animal tissue by the English biologist Robert Hooke was photostatically reproduced, including the long "s." The explanation read, "The type is quaint, but once you notice that an s is often much like an f, you fhould have little trouble reading it." The long s has often been parodied in Mad Magazine, including the usage "Poor Alfred'f Almanack."

S is one of the most commonly used letters of the Latin Alphabet in Basic English language.

Codes for computing

In Unicode the capital S is U+0053 and the lowercase s is U+0073.

The ASCII code for capital S is 83 and for lowercase s is 115; or in binary 01010011 and 01110011, correspondingly.

The EBCDIC code for capital S is 226 and for lowercase s is 162.

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "S" and "s" for upper and lower case respectively.

Similar letters and symbols

• Ş, ş — S-cedilla
• Š, š — S-caron
• Ș, ș — S with comma below (used in Romanian)
• Ś, ś — S with acute accent (used in Polish)
• Ŝ, ŝ — S with circumflex accent (used in Esperanto)
• ʂ — S with hook (used in the International Phonetic Alphabet for the voiceless retroflex fricative)
• Ṡ, ṡ — S with dot above (used in old Irish Gaelic)
• Ṣ, ṣ — S with dot below (used in Indic transliteration)
• Ṥ, ṥ — S with acute and dot above
• Ṧ, ṧ — S with caron and dot above
• Ṩ, ṩ — S with dots below and above
• Ƨ, ƨ — reversed S (used in Zhuang transliteration)
• ſ — long s
• ʃ — Esh (used in the International Phonetic Alphabet for the voiceless postalveolar fricative)
• ∫, ∫ — the integral sign
• $ — the dollar sign
• ß — the German Eszett or "sharp s"
• Ѕ, ѕ — Cyrillic letter Dze
• -dd — Is treated with an "S" sound in gaelic, especially at the end of words
• § the Section Sign
• Superman's 'S' symbol

See also

For other meanings and uses of the letter "S", see S (disambiguation).

The ISO basic Latin alphabet
Aa	Bb	Cc	Dd	Ee	Ff	Gg	Hh	Ii	Jj	Kk	Ll	Mm	Nn	Oo	Pp	Qq	Rr	Ss	Tt	Uu	Vv	Ww	Xx	Yy	Zz
Letter S with diacritics ŚśṤṥŜŝŠšṦṧṠṡẛŞşṢṣṨṩȘșᵴᶊʂȿS̩s̩? Two-letter combinations Sa Sb Sc Sd Se Sf Sg Sh Si Sj Sk Sl Sm Sn So Sp Sq Sr Ss St Su Sv Sw Sx Sy Sz SA SB SC SD SE SF SG SH SI SJ SK SL SM SN SO SP SQ SR SS ST SU SV SW SX SY SZ Letter-digit & Digit-letter combinations                 S0 S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9                 0S 1S 2S 3S 4S 5S 6S 7S 8S 9S history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters

References