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Template:Two other uses {{Wiktionary|A|kill!! Phoenician
aleph ! Greek
Alpha ! Etruscan
A ! Roman/Cyrillic
A |- style="background-color:white; text-align:center;" |[[Image:EgyptianA-01.svg|dasdIn 1600 B.C. the Phoenician alphabet's letter had a linear form that served as the base for some later forms. Its name must have corresponded closely to the Hebrew or Arabic aleph.

Blackletter A	Uncial A	Another Blackletter A
Modern Roman A	Modern Italic A	Modern Script A

When the Ancient Greeks adopted the alphabet, they had no use for the glottal stop that the letter had denoted in Phoenician and other Semitic languages, so they used the sign to represent the vowel /a/, and kept its name with a minor change (alpha). In the earliest Greek gjused in most current handwriting consists of a circle and vertical stoke ("ɑ"), called Latin alpha or "script a". Most printed material uses a form consisting of a small loop with an arc over it ("a"). Both derive from the majuscule (capital) form. 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.

Usage

In English, "a" by itself frequently denotes the near-open front unrounded vowel (/æ/) as in pad, the open back unrounded vowel (/ɑː/) as in father, or, in concert with a later orthographic vowel, the diphthong /eɪ/ as in ace and major, due to effects of the great vowel shift.

In most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, "a" denotes an open front unrounded vowel (/a/). In the International Phonetic Alphabet, variants of "a" denote various vowels. In X-SAMPA, capital "A" denotes the open back unrounded vowel and lowercase "a" denotes the open front unrounded vowel.

"A" is the third common used letter in English, and the second most common in Spanish and French. In one study, on average, about 3.68% of letters used in English tend to be ‹a›s, while the number is 6.22% in Spanish and 3.95% in French.

"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.

A turned "a" ("ɐ") is used by the International Phonetic Alphabet for the near-open central vowel, while a turned capital "A" ("∀") is used in predicate logic to specify universal quantification.

{{Letter |NATO=Alpha |Morse=·– |Character=A1 |Braille=⠁ g"A" is 193 and for lowercase "a" is 129; or in binary 11000001 and 10000001, respectively.

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "A" and "a" for upper and lower case, respectively.

See also

• ª
• Æ
• Alpha
• Cyrillic A

References

1. "Percentages of Letter frequencies per Thousand words". Retrieved 2006-05-01.
2. "Letters affect exam results" (Document). British Psychological Society. 9 March 2010. {{cite document}}: Unknown parameter |url= ignored (help)

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External links

• History of the Alphabet
• Texts on Wikisource:
  • “A” in A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson
  • Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  • Beach, Chandler B., ed. (1914). The New Student's Reference Work. Chicago: F. E. Compton and Co. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  • Reynolds, Francis J., ed. (1921). "A". Collier's New Encyclopedia. New York: P. F. Collier & Son Company.

• Misplaced Pages articles incorporating citation to the NSRW with no title or wstitle parameter
• Latin letters
• Vowel letters
• Requests for audio pronunciation (English)