S

The long s (ſ) will redirect here. See Long S for its purposes. You may also be looking for the Korean band S#arp.

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 ess, or es- in compounds such as es-hook.

In most writing systems that use the Latin alphabet, as well as the International Phonetic Alphabet, the letter [s] corresponds to a voiceless alveolar sibilant.

Semitic Šîn (šimš sun/uraeus) was pronounced as the voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ] (like the sound of the letters sh 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 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 similarly to the English digraph "sh," though with rounded lips. When starting a word, but followed by a consonant, it is pronounced with the same "sh" sound (e.g., smuck, snell, spitz), but when starting a word followed by a vowel, it is pronounced like the English "z," not the German one. Firms started in German-speaking countries, like Siemens, would prefer to have their customers world-wide pronounce the name of the company in this manner.

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 ).

Alternative representations

Sierra represents the letter S in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

In international Morse code the letter S is DitDitDit: · · ·

In Braille the letter S is represented as ⠎ (in Unicode), the dot pattern:

.X
X.
X.

Computing

In Unicode the capital S is codepoint 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.

Meanings for S

• As the first letter of a postal code,
  • In Canada, S stands for Saskatchewan.
  • In the United Kingdom, S stands for Sheffield.
• In international license plate codes, S stands for Sweden.
• In photography, some SLR cameras (such as Konica Minolta cameras) use S to signify shutter priority mode, where the user sets the shutter speed and the camera determines the aperture. Canon cameras use Tv instead of S.
• In calendars, S is often the abbreviation for Saturday or Sunday, or the month September. U is sometimes used for Sunday to avoid confusing it with Saturday.
• In education, S stands for a satisfactory grade.
• In computing,
  • S may refer to the S programming language.
  • <s> is the HTML start tag for strike-through text.
  • On pc's, Ctrl-S, and Mac OS, Command-S, saves the open document.
  • On MS DOS, Ctrl-S stops output to a terminal, while Ctrl-Q resumes it.
• In economics,
  • S may stands for supply.
  • S may be used to represent savings.
• In finance, S is the U.S. ticker symbol for Sprint Nextel Corporation and formerly the U.S. ticker symbol of Sears, Roebuck and Co.
• In weather forecasting and geography, S stands for south, one of the 4 cardinal directions.

In science

• • s is the symbol for the second, the SI base unit for time.
  • s is the abbreviation for the scruple, an apothecaries' system unit of mass (℈ is also used).
• In mathematics,
  • S may represent a sum.
  • Hence, the long s is used as the integral sign.
  • s often represents an arclength.
  • A blackboard bold represents the sedenions.
  • S_n is the symmetric group of order n
• In physics,
  • In the SI system, S is the symbol for siemens, the SI derived unit for electric conductance.
  • In astronomy, S is the symbol for the spat, an unit of distance (equal to 10¹² m)
  • In ultracentrifugation, S is the symbol for the Svedberg, a unit of sedimentation rate.
  • s is sometimes used to represent a position, distance or displacement function, or stands for separation.
  • In thermodynamics, S stands for entropy
• In biochemistry, S is the symbol for serine.
• In chemistry,
  • S is the symbol for the chemical element sulfur.
  • The S-block is a group of chemical elements in the periodic table.
  • In stereochemistry, S (sinister) signifies counterclockwise arrangement of substituents around a carbon atom using the Cahn Ingold Prelog priority rules

Similar letters and symbols

• Ŝ, ŝ — S-circumflex
• Ş, ş — S-cedilla
• Š, š — S-caron
• Ș, ș — S with comma below (used in Romanian)
• ʂ — S with hook (used in the International Phonetic Alphabet for 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 voiceless postalveolar fricative)
• ∫, ∫ — the integral sign
• $ — the dollar sign
• ß — the German Eszett or "sharp s"
• Ѕ, ѕ — Cyrillic letter Dze

See also