During your German studies, you have come across the letter ‘ß’ which your German teacher calls SZ or sharp S. The letter was introduced in 1903 because the double S in Roman typography looked similar to SZ in old German typography. It came out of fashion in Switzerland but is still used in Standard German typography to this day. ß did not exist as a capital letter, but a capital ß was recently introduced. ß stands after long vowels and diphthongs and, contrary to belief, is not simply replaceable with double S. You may have wondered how to type ß on your computer when typing up your homework for your German language course: on an Apple Mac computer, hold down the S-Key on your keyboard and select 1, same applies to iOS. On a Windows computer, hold down the ALT key and type 225.
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