The Introduction of the Uppercase Eszett in the Unicode Standard
After the initial proposal by Andreas Stötzner was rejected in 2004, the debate on including the uppercase sharp „ß“ continued. In 2005, the Council for German Orthography acknowledged the issue and recognized the need for a solution. However, the Council emphasized that an initiative from the writing community, particularly typographers, was necessary to establish an alternative representation for the uppercase „ß.“
In this context, on April 27, 2007, the German Institute for Standardization (DIN) submitted a renewed proposal for the inclusion of the uppercase Eszett as „LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S“ to the Unicode Consortium. Germany was represented by members of the DIN-NIA 29.01 (Coded Character Sets) during the relevant session. In the 50th meeting of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Working Group from April 23 to 27, 2007, it was finally decided that the uppercase Eszett should be assigned the code point U+1E9E in the Unicode Standard, following this proposal.
The decision was implemented, and on April 4, 2008, the uppercase sharp „ß“ was officially included in Unicode Standard Version 5.1. It was assigned the code point U+1E9E, marking a significant advancement in supporting German orthography and typography.
The inclusion of the uppercase „ß“ in the Unicode Standard greatly facilitated its accurate representation in digital texts and typesetting systems, becoming a crucial element in digital font design for the German language.
Technical Details
Glyphe: ẞ
Unicode: U+1E9E
Unicode-Bezeichnung: LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S
HTML (dezimal): &-#-7-8-3-8;
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