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	== History ==		== History ==

			a vowel. See ].
	The letter "A" can be traced to a ] of an ] head in ] or the ].
	{\| class="wikitable"
	\|- style="background-color:#EEEEEE; text-align:center;"
	! Egyptian hieroglyph<br> ox's head
	! Proto-Semitic<br> ox's head
	! Phoenician <br>''aleph''
	! Greek <br>Alpha
	! Etruscan <br>A
	! Roman <br>A
	\|- style="background-color:white; text-align:center;"
	\|]
	\|]
	\|]
	\|]
	\|]
	\|]
	\|}

	When the ] adopted the alphabet, they had no use for the ] that the letter had denoted in ] and other ], so they used the sign for the vowel {{IPA\|/a/}}, and changed its name to ]. In the earliest Greek inscriptions after the ], dating to the ], the letter rests upon its side, but in the ] of later times it generally resembles the modern capital letter, although many local varieties can be distinguished by the shortening of one leg, or by the angle at which the cross line is set.

	The ] brought the Greek alphabet to what is now ] and left the letter unchanged. The Romans later adopted the ] to write ], and the resulting letter was preserved in the modern ] used to write many languages, including ].

	{\| cellspacing="10" cellpadding="0" style="background-color: white; float: right;"
	\|- align="center"
	\|]<br />] A
	\|]<br />] A
	\|]<br />Another Capital A
	\|- align="center"
	\|]<br />Modern Roman A
	\|]<br />Modern Italic A
	\|]<br />Modern Script A
	\|}
	The letter has two ] (lower-case) forms. The form used in most current ], and in ], consists of a circle and vertical stroke ({{Unicode\|ɑ}}), called ] or "script a". Most printed material uses a form consisting of a small loop with an arc over it ({{IPA\|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 ] 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 ], the letter "A" by itself usually denotes the ] ({{IPA\|/æ/}}) as in ''pad'', the ] ({{IPA\|/ɑː/}}) as in ''father'', or, in concert with a later orthographic vowel, the diphthong {{IPA\|/eɪ/}} (though the pronunciation varies with the dialect) as in ''ace'' and ''major'', due to effects of the ].

	In most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, the letter A denotes either an ] ({{IPA\|/ɑ/}}), or an ] ({{IPA\|/a/}}). In the ], variants of the letter A denote various ]s. In ], capital A denotes the ] and lowercase a denotes the ].

	''A'' is the third-most common letter in English, and the second-most common in ] and ]. On average, about 8.2% of letters in English tend to be ''A''s, while the number is 6.2% in Spanish and 4% in French.<ref>{{cite web\|url=http://starbase.trincoll.edu/~crypto/resources/LetFreq.html\|title=Percentages of Letter frequencies per Thousand words\|accessdate=2006-05-01}}</ref>

	''A'' also is the English ], extended to ''an'' before a vowel. See ].

	''A-'' also is a ] that serves to negate the ] to which it is attached, such as ''a''moral, ''a''political, etc. This derives from Greek.		''A-'' also is a ] that serves to negate the ] to which it is attached, such as ''a''moral, ''a''political, etc. This derives from Greek.

Revision as of 13:40, 8 November 2007

For other uses of "A", see A (disambiguation).

ISO basic Latin alphabet

Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
v t e

The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is a (/eɪ/), plural aes, as, or a's.

History

a vowel. See a, an.

A- also is a prefix that serves to negate the morpheme to which it is attached, such as amoral, apolitical, etc. This derives from Greek.

Codes for computing

class="template-letter-box | In Unicode the capital A is codepoint U+0041 and the lowercase a is U+0061.

In Hex, A is the character used to represent decimal 10, or in binary, 01010

The ASCII code for capital A is 65 and for lowercase a is 97; or in binary 01000001 and 01100001, respectively.

The EBCDIC code for capital A is 193 and for lowercase a is 129.

The morse code for A is dit dah or a dot and a dash.

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

References

"a," Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, (1993)
Merriam-Webster's Manual for Writers and Editors p. 61 (1998); Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2003) p. 281

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