View source for Ș

{{short description|Latin letter S with comma}}
{{Distinguish|text = [[Ş|Ş (S-cedilla)]]}}
[[File:Latin letter S with comma below.svg|thumb|S-comma]]
[[File:Virguliţa şi sedila.svg|thumb|180px|Appearance of [[Comma#Diacritical usage|comma]] (upper row) and [[cedilla]] (lower row) in the Times New Roman font. Note that the cedilla is placed higher than the comma.]]

'''S-comma''' (majuscule: '''Ș''', minuscule: '''ș''') is a letter which is part of the [[Romanian alphabet]], used to represent the sound {{IPA|/ʃ/}}, the [[voiceless postalveolar fricative]] (like ''sh'' in ''shoe''). S-comma consists of an s with a [[Comma#Diacritical usage|diacritical comma]] underneath it, and is distinct from [[s-cedilla]].

== History ==
The letter was proposed in the ''Buda Lexicon'', a book published in 1825, which included two texts by [[Petru Maior]], ''Orthographia romana sive latino-valachica una cum clavi'' and ''Dialogu pentru inceputul limbei române'', introducing ș for {{IPA|/ʃ/}} and ț for {{IPA|/ts/}}.<ref>Marinella Lörinczi Angioni, "Coscienza nazionale romanza e ortografia: il romeno tra alfabeto cirillico e alfabeto latino ", ''La Ricerca Folklorica'', No. 5, La scrittura: funzioni e ideologie. (Apr., 1982), pp. 75–85.</ref>
[[File:S signo mediae lunulae in Lexicon de Buda.png|thumb|none|400px|S with "half moon" beneath ("''s'' subnotamus signo mediae lunulae") proposed as a letter in the Buda Lexicon. Note that the form is reversed from the modern version, resembling a small C.]]
[[File:Ş, ţ and cedilla in Ortografia limbei române 1895.png|thumb|none|400px|[[Ş|S-cedilla]], [[Ţ|T-cedilla]] and a cedilla illustrated with a comma in ''Ortografia limbei române'' published by the Romanian Academy in 1895.]]

==Unicode support==
S-comma was not initially supported in early [[Unicode]] versions, nor in the predecessors like [[ISO/IEC 8859-2]] and [[Windows-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 between ''ș'' and ''ş'' is minimal. In 1999, at the request of the {{ill|Romanian Standardization Association|ro|Asociația de Standardizare din România}}{{citation needed|date=October 2020}}, S-comma was introduced in Unicode 3.0. Nevertheless, encoding for the S-comma was not supported in retail versions of [[Microsoft]] [[Windows 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 like [[publishing]].

The letter is part of Unicode's [[Latin 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).<ref>Unicode code charts. [https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0180.pdf Latin Extended-B: Range 0180–024F]</ref> In [[HyperText Markup Language|HTML]], these can be encoded by <code>&amp;#x0218;</code> and <code>&amp;#x0219;</code>, respectively.

==Usage==
The letter represents the [[voiceless postalveolar fricative]] {{IPA|/ʃ/}} (as in "<u>sh</u>ow") in [[Romanian language]]. On outdated systems which do not support the glyph, the symbol {{lang|tr|Ş/[[ş]]}} ([[S-cedilla|S with cedilla]]) is used. Example word: {{lang|tr|Timișoara}}.

== Character encoding ==
{{charmap
|0218|name1=LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S WITH COMMA BELOW
|0219|name2=LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH COMMA BELOW
}}

==See also==
*[[Ş|Ş (S-cedilla)]]
*[[Š]]
*[[T-comma|Ț (T-comma)]]
*[[D-comma|D̦ (D-comma)]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

{{Latin script|S|comma}}

[[Category:Latin letters with diacritics|S-comma]]
[[Category:Romanian language|S-comma]]