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The Power of Eszett
last modified: Saturday, July 17, 2010 (9:09:11 PM)
Going around once again through fandom as well as more professional sites, I notice how many people still use a <b>B / b</b> when writing "Weiß". The German ligature "ß" is used to replace the double "s" (short vowels, I believe?). "Weiss" is accurate. "WeiB/b" is not...that actually changes the meaning of the word, to refer to an "older woman".

Okay, I admit...I'm guilty of using inaccurate variations myself, mostly the Greek symbol for "beta", but only when making site graphics. I mean, very few fonts have the eszett. And I don't have the time (read: am lazy) to manipulate an "f" and "s" and fuse it onto a graphic.


Just sayin'....

D''oh!!!Monday, July 19, 2010 - 11:47:25 AM
skyrat

….

Firstly, I totally thought the topic of this post was going to be about Schwarz’s employers, heh.

Secondly >___
Hahahaha. I’m very grateful to be made aware of that!

Anyway, I never really understood why people would write it with a ‘b’ over the ‘ss’ if they’re not going to bother with the eszett…I notice that that’s more common though when the Japanese Romanize it. You find ‘Weiß’ and ‘Weib’ come up on YJ frequently…but ‘Weiss’ is almost unheard of.

I generally write it as ‘Weiß’ (when I’m not just being dumb and accidently using the wrong symbol) when I’m writing something that will be read by lots of people, but write ‘Weiss’ when I’m just chatting with my friends, etc. With the exception that I deliberately chose ‘Weiss’ for my gallery titles here on RS. Mainly because I figured more people would be searching with that spelling since I think it’s the most common version (among native English speakers.) I actually had it as ‘Weiß’ for several years and then changed it. I’m always debating whether to change it back or not.



re: The Power of EszettMonday, July 19, 2010 - 11:48:45 AM
skyrat

....for some reason it cut out a piece of the middle of what I just posted!

This is what I''d said after ''secondly'':

Daaaamn, I’ve totally been using the beta symbol half the time when I meant to use ‘ß’…serves me right for getting lazy and using the insert option in Word instead of the Alt num lock code like I used to…. Geeze, I’ve totally not been paying close enough attention to what I’m typing…got some editing to do all over the place now, d’oh.


re: The Power of EszettMonday, July 26, 2010 - 11:50:22 PM
galexia

...don''t forget the beauty of umlauts :D