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Image:Latin alphabet Ss.svg

OSI 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 Latin alphabet. Its name in English is ess /ɛs/, 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. Two notable exceptions are Hungarian and Vietnamese, where it sounds like the English "sugar" or "sure". The letter is often pronounced the same way in Portuguese and German but not every time.

Contents 1 History 2 Codes for computing 3 Meanings for S 4 In science 5 Similar letters and symbols 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] History

Proto-Semitic š	Phoenician S	Etruscan S	Greek Sigma
Image:Proto-semiticS-01.png	Image:PhoenicianS-01.png	Image:EtruscanS-01.png	Image:Sigma uc lc.svg

Semitic Šîn ("teeth") represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ (as in ship). The original form may have represented a picture of a tooth, or possibly that of female breasts. 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 and German (before p, t) 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 like the English digraph "sh." When S is followed either by a p or t, it is pronounced with the same "sh" sound, 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 ).

S is one of the most commonly used letters of the Latin Alphabet in Basic English language.

[edit] Codes for computing

In Unicode the capital S is 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.

[edit] Meanings for S

• In American football, S stands for the position safety on an American football team.
• In calendars, S is often the abbreviation for Saturday or Sunday, or the month September. "Su" or "Sun" is sometimes used for Sunday to avoid confusing it with Saturday, changing Saturday to "Sa" or "Sat"
• In chess, S is sometimes used as a symbol for the knight, to reduce confusion over which of N and K stand for 'knight' and 'king'.
• In clothing, S can mean "small size". European clothing-size standard EN 13402 defines the size code S to refer to chest girths 86–94 cm for men's clothes and bust girths 82–90 cm for women's clothes. Manufacturers also use their own non-standard defining body measurements for this size code.
• In computing,
  • S may refer to the S programming language.
  • <s> is the deprecated HTML start tag for strike-through text. (As like this.)
  • 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 stand for supply.
  • S may be used to represent savings.
  • S was used as the abbreviation for shilling in British currency before decimalisation
• In education, S stands for a satisfactory grade.
• 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 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.
• As the first letter of a postal code,
  • In Canada, S stands for Saskatchewan.
  • In the United Kingdom, S stands for Sheffield.
• In radio,
  • the S band ranges from 2 to 4 GHz.
• United States politics:
  • S could be a prefix for Senate bills
• In weather forecasting and geography, S stands for south, one of the 4 cardinal directions.

[edit] In science

• s is sometimes used to represent a position, distance or displacement function, or stands for separation.
• In astronomy,
  • S stands for a reddish class of stars, carbon stars with zirconium oxide.
  • S is the symbol for the spat, an unit of distance (equal to 10¹² m)
  • S stands for natural satellite; for example, S/2005 P 2 is the second satellite of Pluto sighted in 2005.
  • S stands for the planet Saturn; for example, S/2004 S 7 is the seventh satellite of Saturn sighted in 2004.
  • S stands for a September 16 through 30 discovery, in the provisional designation of a comet (e.g. C/1965 S1, Comet Ikeya-Seki) or asteroid (e.g. (4329) 1982 SX₂).
• In biochemistry,
  • S is the symbol for the amino acid serine.
  • S is the symbol for the Svedberg, a unit of sedimentation for large molecules.
• 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
• In mathematics,
  • S may represent a sum.
  • Hence, the long s is used as the integral sign.
  • s often represents an arclength or any other parameter.
  • A blackboard bold <math>\mathbb{S}</math> represents the sedenions.
  • S_n is the symmetric group of order n
  • S(n,m) is a busy beaver function in computability theory
• In metrology,
  • s is the abbreviation for the scruple, an apothecaries' system unit of mass (℈ is also used).
• In the SI system,
  • S is the symbol for siemens, the SI derived unit for electric conductance.
  • s is the symbol for the second, the SI base unit for time.
• In thermodynamics,
  • S stands for entropy
• In ultracentrifugation,
  • S is the symbol for the Svedberg, a unit of sedimentation rate. Ex: 70S ribosome.

[edit] Similar letters and symbols

• Ş, ş — S-cedilla
• Š, š — S-caron
• Ș, ș — S with comma below (used in Romanian)
• Ś, ś — S with acute accent (used in Polish)
• 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
• <math>\mathrm{S}\!\!\!\Vert</math> (Cifrão) is the symbol of the former portuguese currency (Escudo). It is written with two vertical lines. The same symbol is often used as an allographic variant of the Dollar sign.
• ß — the German Eszett or "sharp s"
• Ѕ, ѕ — Cyrillic letter Dze
• Superman's 'S' symbol

[edit] See also

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

The OSI 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
history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters

[edit] External links

• Wiktionary entry on Sals:S

bs:S ca:S cs:S da:S de:S arc:S el:S es:S eo:S eu:S fr:S (lettre) gd:S gl:S ko:S hr:S ilo:S id:S it:S he:S kw:S la:S hu:S nl:S (letter) ja:S no:S nn:S pl:S pt:S ro:S ru:S (латиница) simple:S sl:S fi:S sv:S tl:S vi:S tr:S yo:S zh:S