Help, German writers!

[umenohana]

How does one write the letter "ß" in cursive??

[Kalessin]

Ahh, the "eszett" character.

 

I couldn't find an example in "regular" cursive, but I did find an example in the german "Sutterlin" script.

 

Here's an article about the eszett in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F

 

Here's the article about Sutterlin script, with the letter written in the exemplar. It looks like in cursive it's written with a short descender below the line, and many writers slant the character to the right.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutterlin

 

Sutterlin handles letter connections a little diffferently than American cursive, so it appears that there's no connector to the next letter.I believe you could connect it to the next letter with a very small loop at the right-hand bottom of the character, finishing it a little like a regular lowercase cursive s.

 

In this example, the eszett doesn't appear, but there is a long s character (the left half of the eszett is a long s):

http://www.mun.ca/rels/morav/pics/tutor/mscript2.html

 

Finally, an article about the long-s character:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s

Edited September 14, 2006 by Kalessin

[umenohana]

The Sutterlin script is so confusing! Thanks for the links.. I think I can fashion my own ß and get away with it..

 

-Hana

[wimg]

Hi Hana,

 

You may also write two esses instead. They did away with the ringel-s several years ago.

 

Back in my secondary school days, we used to write it, cursively, a little skewed to the right with a fairly large descender at the beginning, which started partly under the main body of the character, and then looped back with a big swooping line to the top of the character followed by the two smaller curlies. Very easy and very fast to write.

 

HTH, warm regards, Wim

[umenohana]

Are these acceptable?

[saintsimon]

Are these acceptable?

Perfetto

 

And forget about Sütterlin, that isn't taught and used for half a century, at least.

 

Only the Swiss have dropped the 'ß' completely and use double 's' instead, while in Germany double 's' is just optional for 'ß'

Edited September 15, 2006 by saintsimon

[umenohana]

Thank you all for making things clear! Now I can write my Austrian penpal's address without having to resort to printing!

 

-Hana

[Kalessin]

Hmmm... Since I'm not able to read/write German, I can't say if your example would be acceptable. However, I found more info!

 

If you go to Pelikan's student website, http://www.pelikan-lehrerinfo.de (it's in German), and click on "DOWNLOADS", you'll find a number of handwriting-style fonts that include the modern versions of the special German letters.

 

These are TrueType fonts, so they should load no problem on Mac or PC.

 

Here's an alphabet from one of the fonts (I linked to the Pelikan site), including the eszett letter:

 

http://www.pelikan-lehrerinfo.de/lehrerinfo/shoppix/font_va_prof.gif

 

So in my amateur opinion, I think you've got it! [well, maybe use just a little bit less of a descender]

 

The proof, of course, is if your letter gets delivered with the address written with the eszett.

 

This thread has been great fun. I know Sutterlin is obsolete, but it's really quite unusual, and I think it's an attractive font style.. Also, the spelling reform that was mentioned as getting rid of most usage the eszett and other special usages seems to not have taken hold completely. Wikipedia has an article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_spelling_reform

Edited September 19, 2006 by Kalessin