The article and comments are a bit misleading. The actual official document is a bit clearer: > E3: Bei Schreibung mit Großbuchstaben schreibt man SS. Daneben

The article and comments are a bit misleading. The actual official document is a bit clearer: > E3: Bei Schreibung mit Großbuchstaben schreibt man SS. Daneben ist auch die Verwendung des Großbuchstabens ẞ möglich. Beispiel: Straße – STRASSE – STRAẞE. http://www.rechtschreibrat.com/DOX/rfdr_Regeln_2017.pdf http://www.rechtschreibrat.com/DOX/rfdr_Regeln_2017.pdf (page numbered 29, page 27 of the PDF) Roughly translated: > When writing in uppercase one writes SS. Additionally the use of the uppercase ẞ is also possible. Example: Straße – STRASSE – STRAẞE. In other words, it's an officially blessed variant spelling. The new standard actually defines several variant spellings for cases that have been debated since the last reform, e.g. Delfin ("new") vs Delphin ("old"). It's a lot more forgiving, standardizing a lot of existing usage rather than making up arbitrary rules. It's far more descriptive than the previous spelling reform some fellow Germans still like to bitch and moan about. The reason the capital sharp S is singled out as being newsworthy is mostly that it's one of the few additions; almost everything else is just establishing widespread non-standard variants as permissible.