U+1E9E "ẞ" Latin Capital Letter Sharp S Unicode Character
U+1E9E "ẞ" Latin Capital Letter Sharp S is a unique and relatively recent addition to the character set, officially encoded in version 5.1 of the Unicode Standard in 2008. It represents the capital form of the lowercase sharp s ("ß"), which is traditionally used in German orthography. For many years, the absence of an uppercase version was a notable exception in the Latin alphabet, as the "ß" was always written in lowercase form even at the start of words or in all-caps headings, where it was commonly substituted with the digraph "SS". The creation of the capital ẞ resolved this inconsistency, allowing for a true uppercase equivalent that maintains the distinct visual shape of the sharp s. While its adoption in official German spelling rules and typefaces has been gradual, it is now recognized as a standard character for use in titles, abbreviations, and proper nouns where capitalization is required.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+1E9E |
| Version Added | 5.1 |
| Name | Latin Capital Letter Sharp S |
| Block | Latin Extended Additional |
| General Category | Uppercase Letter |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Left To Right |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ẞ |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ẞ |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xE1 0xBA 0x9E |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x1E9E |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x00001E9E |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u1e9e |
Unicode Properties
| NFC Quick Check | Yes |
| NFD Quick Check | Yes |
| NFKC Quick Check | Yes |
| NFKD Quick Check | Yes |
| Numeric Type | None |
| Numeric Value | NaN |
| Line Break | Alphabetic |
| Uppercase | Yes |
| Simple Lowercase Code Point | "ß" U+00DF Latin Small Letter Sharp S |
| Lowercase Code Point | "ß" U+00DF Latin Small Letter Sharp S |
| Simple Case Folding | "ß" U+00DF Latin Small Letter Sharp S |
| Case Folding | "s" U+0073 Latin Small Letter S "s" U+0073 Latin Small Letter S |
| Cased | Yes |
| Changes When Casefolded | Yes |
| Changes When Casemapped | Yes |
| Changes When Lowercased | Yes |
| Changes When NFKC Casefolded | Yes |
| NFKC Casefold | "s" U+0073 Latin Small Letter S "s" U+0073 Latin Small Letter S |
| NFKC Simple Casefold | "ß" U+00DF Latin Small Letter Sharp S |
| Script | Latin |
| Script Extensions | Latin |
| Indic Syllabic Category | Other |
| ID Start | Yes |
| XID Start | Yes |
| ID Continue | Yes |
| XID Continue | Yes |
| Alphabetic | Yes |
| Vertical Orientation | Rotated |
| Grapheme Base | Yes |
| Grapheme Cluster Break | Other |
| Word Break | Alphabetic letter |
| Sentence Break | Upper |