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looking for alpha/beta? -- beware the "scharfe-ess"
fwiw, if you go looking through fonts for the alpha and beta
characters, you will come across something that "looks like"
a beta character, but with no adjacent alpha. What is that?
It so happens that is the character for the German "Scharfe-ess".
Note that it appears amongst the accented characters not normally
used in (American) English. The "Scharfe-ess" is used in German
(sometimes) in place of a double-s. For example, Fuss (foot)
becomes "Fuß", or Wasser (water) becomes Waßer. (Those characters
look correct on my screen, but not sure they will come through the
ng posting properly). If not, the character I am referring to
is (ansi?) 223.
I am told by German-speakers that the "Scharfe-ess" sounds
(slightly?) different from a double-s, when spoken. But I can't
hear the difference. But that's getting off the subject.
cheers, jw
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