S-comma (majuscule:Ș, minuscule:ș) is a letter which is part of theRomanian alphabet, used to represent the sound/ʃ/, thevoiceless postalveolar fricative (likesh inshoe). S-comma consists of an s with adiacritical comma underneath it, and is distinct froms-cedilla.
The letter was proposed in theBuda Lexicon, a book published in 1825, which included two texts byPetru Maior,Orthographia romana sive latino-valachica una cum clavi andDialogu pentru inceputul limbei române, introducing ș for/ʃ/ and ț for/ts/.[1]
S-comma was not initially supported in earlyUnicode versions, nor in the predecessors likeISO/IEC 8859-2 andWindows-1250. Instead,Ş (S-cedilla), a character available since Unicode 1.1.0 (1993), was used for digital texts written in Romanian. In some contexts, like with low-resolution screens and printouts, the visual distinction betweenș andş is minimal. In 1999, at the request of theRomanian Standardization Association [ro][citation needed], S-comma was introduced in Unicode 3.0. Nevertheless, encoding for the S-comma was not supported in retail versions ofMicrosoftWindows XP, but a later European Union Expansion Font Update provided the feature. While digital accessibility to S-comma has since improved, both characters continue to be used interchangeably in various contexts likepublishing.
The letter is part of Unicode'sLatin Extended-B range, under "Additions for Romanian", titled as "Latin capital letter S with comma below" (U+0218) and "Latin small letter s with comma below" (U+0219).[2] InHTML, these can be encoded byȘ andș, respectively.
The letter represents thevoiceless postalveolar fricative/ʃ/ (as in "show") inRomanian language. On outdated systems which do not support the glyph, the symbolŞ/ş (S with cedilla) is used. Example word:Timișoara.
| Preview | Ș | ș | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S WITH COMMA BELOW | LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH COMMA BELOW | ||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 536 | U+0218 | 537 | U+0219 |
| UTF-8 | 200 152 | C8 98 | 200 153 | C8 99 |
| Numeric character reference | Ș | Ș | ș | ș |