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This may be due to the diversion of round-s / final-s and long-s / between-s in the Fraktura type font. The Eszett is a ligature of long-s and round-s, which has a ringle or curly shape, while the long-s looks like an f (Eff) without the horizontal bar. The long-s is placed within words, the round-s at the end of a word or a part of a word that would form an own word.

To give an example, let's assune the f is a long-s and the s is a round-s: then, we write the word Pafswort (en: password), and because we cannot divide the fs (ss) - not Pas-swort - we type Paßwort. Dividable ss would be typed as ff (two long-s), for example Kaffe (cash register), because we can divide Kas-se.

I don't know exactly if HTML allows the use of a long-s, at least I don't have a special key for it on the keyboard.

This is very easy and understandable from the history of this fine ligature that improves readability.



Attention, the Eszett is a ligature, not a letter. The German alphabet has 26 letters, not 27. :-)

There are other ligatures (ck, ch, ff, fi, fl, ffl) that for example LaTeX can handle very well. There are furthermore diacritics or umlauts (ä, ö, ü) that aren't latters, too.