Zess

Zess is the name of a character in the Initial Teaching Alphabet, a series of about 44 minuscule letters specified by Sir James Pitman, grandson of an inventor of shorthand, to assist children in their learning to read English. Its form is easy to describe: it is a backward z.
The use of the zess is to replace the letter s where it is pronounced in English; most obviously in the word is. Those plurals of nouns or third-person present forms of verbs in which the letter s is voiced are spelled with a zess (dogs for both uses); those in which it is unvoiced are still spelled with an s (barks for both uses).
The I.T.A. also has an ordinary z for use where a sound is written with a letter z in traditional English orthography.
The zess is specified only as minuscule in form. For an equivalent of a capital letter, it is made boldface, or simply printed larger in size.

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