It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives.[3] The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey ⟨a⟩ and single-storey ⟨ɑ⟩. The letter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type.
In English, the name of the letter is the long A sound, pronounced /ˈeɪ/. Its name in most other languages matches the letter's pronunciation in open syllables.
Pronunciation of the name of the letter ⟨a⟩ in European languages. /a/ and /aː/ can differ phonetically between [a], [ä], [æ] and [ɑ] depending on the language.
When the ancient Greeks adopted the alphabet, they had no use for a letter representing a glottal stop—so they adapted sign to represent the vowel /a/, calling the letter by the similar name alpha. In the earliest Greek inscriptions dating to the 8th century BC following the Greek Dark Ages, the letter rests upon its side. However, in the later Greek alphabet it generally resembles the modern capital form—though many local varieties can be distinguished by the shortening of one leg, or by the angle at which the cross line is set.
The Etruscans brought the Greek alphabet to the Italian Peninsula, and left the form of alpha unchanged. When the Romans adopted the Etruscan alphabet to write Latin, the resulting form used in the Latin script would come to be used to write many other languages, including English.
Egyptian
Proto-Sinaitic
Proto-Canaanite
Phoenician
Western Greek
Etruscan
Latin
Typographic variants
Different glyphs of the lowercase letter ⟨a⟩Allographs include a double-storey ⟨a⟩ and single-storey ⟨ɑ⟩.
During Roman times, there were many variant forms of the letter A. First was the monumental or lapidary style, which was used when inscribing on stone or other more permanent media. There was also a cursive style used for everyday or utilitarian writing, which was done on more perishable surfaces. Due to the perishable nature of these surfaces, there are not as many examples of this style as there are of the monumental, but there are still many surviving examples of different types of cursive, such as majuscule cursive, minuscule cursive, and semi-cursive minuscule. Variants also existed that were intermediate between the monumental and cursive styles. The known variants include the early semi-uncial, the uncial, and the later semi-uncial.[6]
At the end of the Roman Empire (5th century AD), several variants of the cursive minuscule developed through Western Europe. Among these were the semi-cursive minuscule of Italy, the Merovingian script in France, the Visigothic script in Spain, and the Insular or Anglo-Irish semi-uncial or Anglo-Saxon majuscule of Great Britain. By the ninth century, the Caroline script, which was very similar to the present-day form, was the principal form used in book-making, before the advent of the printing press. This form was derived through a combining of prior forms.[6]
Road sign in Ireland showing the Irish "Latin alpha" form of ⟨a⟩ in lower and upper case forms
15th-century Italy saw the formation of the two main variants that are known today. These variants, the Italic and Roman forms, were derived from the Caroline Script version. The Italic form ⟨ɑ⟩, also called script a, is often used in handwriting; it consists of a circle with a vertical stroke on its right. In the hands of medieval Irish and English writers, this form gradually developed from a 5th-century form resembling the Greek letter tau⟨τ⟩.[4] The Roman form ⟨a⟩ is found in most printed material, and consists of a small loop with an arc over it.[6] Both derive from the majuscule form ⟨A⟩. In Greek handwriting, it was common to join the left leg and horizontal stroke into a single loop, as demonstrated by the uncial version shown. Many fonts then made the right leg vertical. In some of these, the serif that began the right leg stroke developed into an arc, resulting in the printed form, while in others it was dropped, resulting in the modern handwritten form. Graphic designers refer to the Italic and Roman forms as single-decker a and double decker a respectively.
Italic type is commonly used to mark emphasis or more generally to distinguish one part of a text from the rest set in Roman type. There are some other cases aside from italic type where script a⟨ɑ⟩, also called Latin alpha, is used in contrast with Latin ⟨a⟩, such as in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
the diphthong/eɪ/ as in ace and major, usually when ⟨a⟩ is followed by one, or occasionally two, consonants and then another vowel letter—this results from Middle English lengthening followed by the Great Vowel Shift
a schwa/ə/ in many unstressed syllables, as in about, comma, solar
The double ⟨aa⟩ sequence does not occur in native English words, but is found in some words derived from foreign languages such as Aaron and aardvark.[8] However, ⟨a⟩ occurs in many common digraphs, all with their own sound or sounds, particularly ⟨ai⟩, ⟨au⟩, ⟨aw⟩, ⟨ay⟩, ⟨ea⟩ and ⟨oa⟩.
⟨a⟩ is the third-most-commonly used letter in English after ⟨e⟩ and ⟨t⟩, as well as in French; it is the second most common in Spanish, and the most common in Portuguese. ⟨a⟩ represents approximately 8.2% of letters as used in English texts;[9] the figure is around 7.6% in French[10] 11.5% in Spanish,[11] and 14.6% in Portuguese.[12]
Other languages
In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, ⟨a⟩ denotes an open unrounded vowel, such as /a/, /ä/, or /ɑ/. An exception is Saanich, in which ⟨a⟩—and the glyph ⟨Á⟩—stands for a close-mid front unrounded vowel/e/.
When using base-16 notation, ⟨A⟩ is conventionally used as the numeral corresponding to the number 10 in decimal.
In algebra, the letter a along with various other letters of the alphabet is often used to denote a variable, with various conventional meanings in different areas of mathematics. In 1637, René Descartes "invented the convention of representing unknowns in equations by x, y, and z, and knowns by a, b, and c",[13] and this convention is still often followed, especially in elementary algebra.
In geometry, capital Latin letters are used to denote objects including line segments, lines, and rays[6] A capital A is also typically used as one of the letters to represent an angle in a triangle, the lowercase a representing the side opposite angle A.[5]
"A" is often used to denote something or someone of a better or more prestigious quality or status: A−, A or A+, the best grade that can be assigned by teachers for students' schoolwork; "A grade" for clean restaurants; A-list celebrities, etc. Such associations can have a motivating effect, as exposure to the letter A has been found to improve performance, when compared with other letters.[14]
"A" is used as a prefix on some words, such as asymmetry, to mean "not" or "without" (from Greek).
In English grammar, a, and its variant an, are forms of the indefinite article used to introduce noun phrases.
"A" is used to denote size, as in a narrow size shoe,[5] or a small cup size in a brassiere.[15]
The Latin letters ⟨A⟩ and ⟨a⟩ have Unicode encodings U+0041ALATIN CAPITAL LETTER A and U+0061aLATIN SMALL LETTER A. These are the same code points as were used in ASCII and ISO 8859. There are also precomposed character encodings for ⟨A⟩ and ⟨a⟩ with diacritics, for most of those listed above; the remainder are produced using combining diacritics.
^"Cyrillic Alphabet". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 26 May 2018. Retrieved 25 May 2018.
^Silvestre, M. J. B. (1850). Universal Palaeography. Translated by Madden, Frederic. London: Henry G. Bohn. Retrieved 27 October 2020.
^Frothingham, A. L. Jr. (1891). "Italic Studies". Archaeological News. American Journal of Archaeology. 7 (4): 534. JSTOR496497. Retrieved 27 October 2020.
Ciani, Keith D.; Sheldon, Kennon M. (2010). "A Versus F: The Effects of Implicit Letter Priming on Cognitive Performance". British Journal of Educational Psychology. 80 (1): 99–119. doi:10.1348/000709909X466479. PMID19622200.
Diringer, David (2000). "A". In Bayer, Patricia (ed.). Encyclopedia Americana. Vol. I. Danbury, CT: Grolier. ISBN978-0-717-20133-4.
Gelb, I. J.; Whiting, R. M. (1998). "A". In Ranson, K. Anne (ed.). Academic American Encyclopedia. Vol. I. Danbury, CT: Grolier. ISBN978-0-717-22068-7.
Hall-Quest, Olga Wilbourne (1997). "A". In Johnston, Bernard (ed.). Collier's Encyclopedia. Vol. I. New York: P. F. Collier.
