S

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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 basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English (pronounced /ɛs/) is spelled ess, or usually es- when part of a compound word; the plural is esses.^[1]

Contents 1 History 2 Usage 3 Codes for computing 4 See also 5 References

[edit] History

Proto-Semitic š	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/. In Etruscan and Latin, the /s/ value was maintained, and only in modern languages has the letter been used to represent other sounds.

An alternative form of the minuscule 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 lower case f. The ligature of ſs (or ſz) became the German ess-tsett, ß.

[edit] Usage

S represents the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ in most languages; it also commonly represents the voiced alveolar fricative /z/, as in the Portuguese mesa, the English does, or the German sein. It may also represent the voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ], as in Hungarian and German (before p, t).

[edit] Codes for computing

In Unicode, the capital S is U+0053 and the lower case 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 the code for lowercase s is 162.

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

[edit] See also

С, с - Es (Cyrillic) Ц, ц - Tse (Cyrillic) Σ, σ - Sigma (Greek) Ƨ, ƨ — reversed S (used in Zhuang transliteration) ſ — long s $ — the dollar sign ∫, ∫ — the integral sign

ß — the German Eszett or "sharp s" ʃ — Esh (used in the International Phonetic Alphabet for the voiceless postalveolar fricative) Ѕ, ѕ — Cyrillic letter Dze -dd — Is treated with an "S" sound in Gaelic, especially at the end of words § the Section Sign

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: S

[edit] References

The Basic modern 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 ŚśṤṥŜŝŠšṦṧṠṡẛŞşṢṣṨṩȘșS̩s̩ᵴᶊʂȿ 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 • ISO/IEC 646