GERMANY:A 130-year war of typographical attrition has come to a rather inky end, writes Derek Scallyin Berlin
It's not every day that a new letter of the alphabet comes along. But, last Monday, an addition to the German alphabet emerged blinking into the daylight after a campaign lasting 130 years - to a hail of indifference.
The nervous debutante is the big sister of the letter ß. Known in German as the " eszett" or "sharp s", the ß is the bane of German language students, who encounter it in their very first lesson when they try to say their name: " Ich heiße Derek." The only consolation was that the ß didn't have a capital version, meaning that it could be dispensed with in headlines, signs or any place where letters attract attention.
But convenience can confuse: the German version of Sesame Street, for instance, is Sesamstraße, but the famous green sign is written in capitals as SESAMSTRASSE.
For years, the ß has been the embarrassing relative in the German alphabet: always there, impossible to get rid of. Not that German language mavens haven't tried. In the last decade, two successive spelling reforms tried to force the ß to bow out gracefully. The ß was reduced to a bit player and stripped of most of its linguistic responsibilities, but still it hung on.
German speakers in Switzerland, Europe's euthanasia capital, put the ß out of its misery years ago, replacing it everywhere with "ss".
Considering its fading fortunes, the comeback of the ß is startling.
It comes to us thanks to the German Norms Institute (DIN), the people who brought us the paper size standards A4, A3 and so on. They proposed a capital ß to the International Organisation for Standardisation and, on Monday, the letter became standard - with ISO 10646.
DIN says the ß has an active lobby group but declines to name its powerful friends. The German standards organisation is anxious to disassociate itself from the capital ß, seeing its role more as midwife than mother.
"It's not about forcing people to use the letter. Our priority was to establish a standard to make it mechanically possible to use," says Roman Grahle of DIN. "Whether it will be used or not is another matter."
The main problem facing the capital ß is that it is homeless. On the current German keyboard, ß shares a key with "?" but that flat share might have to end now that ß has a big sister.
Leading keyboard manufacturer Cherry says it is already working on a solution. It hasn't ruled out another "€" solution, forcing the capital ß to camp out on another letter's key.
The capital ß faces another technical hurdle: convincing font designers to come up with a capital ß for their particular design family of letters. That's why the new letter can't even appear in this article.
And when those technical problems are solved, the new letter will still face a credibility problem.
In one internet forum yesterday, the new letter was mocked as a "third nipple": decorative but useless.
The German language police are also keeping their distance.
"We are not responsible for letters, but for keeping an eye on spelling and to make sure rules are followed," says Dr Kerstin Günter of the German Language Council.
"Whether there is a need for this letter is a question that remained unanswered for centuries. It's likely to remain that way for a while to come."