{{short description|Latin letter S with comma}} {{Distinguish|text = Ş (S-cedilla)}} thumb|S-comma|class=skin-invert-image [[File:Virguliţa şi sedila.svg|thumb|180px|Appearance of comma (upper row) and cedilla (lower row) in the Times New Roman font. Note that the cedilla is placed higher than the comma.|class=skin-invert-image]]
'''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 diacritical comma underneath it, and is distinct from S-cedilla.
== History == The letter was proposed in the {{ill|Buda Lexicon{{!}}''Buda Lexicon''|de|Budaer Lexikon|v=sup}}, 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> 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.|class=skin-invert-image [[File:Ş, ţ and cedilla in Ortografia limbei române 1895.png|thumb|none|400px|S-cedilla, T-cedilla and a cedilla illustrated with a comma in ''Ortografia limbei române'' published by the Romanian Academy in 1895.|class=skin-invert-image]]
==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|v=sup}}{{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 HTML, these can be encoded by <code>&#x218;</code> and <code>&#x219;</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 ''Ş/ş'' (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 (S-cedilla) *Š *Ț (T-comma) *D̦ (D-comma)
==References== {{reflist}}
{{Latin script|S|comma}}
S-comma S-comma