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37-571: A , or a , is the first letter and the first vowel letter of the Latin alphabet , used in the modern English alphabet , and others worldwide. Its name in English is a (pronounced / ˈ eɪ / AY ), plural aes . It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha , from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in

74-565: 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 . In modern English orthography ,

111-513: A lowercase form (also called minuscule ). Upper- and lowercase letters represent the same sound, but serve different functions in writing. Capital letters are most often used at the beginning of a sentence, as the first letter of a proper name or title, or in headers or inscriptions. They may also serve other functions, such as in the German language where all nouns begin with capital letters. The terms uppercase and lowercase originated in

148-549: A variety of modern uses in mathematics, science, and engineering . People and objects are sometimes named after letters, for one of these reasons: The word letter entered Middle English c.  1200 , borrowed from the Old French letre . It eventually displaced the previous Old English term bōcstæf ' bookstaff '. Letter ultimately descends from the Latin littera , which may have been derived from

185-511: 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⟩ . The Roman form ⟨a⟩ is found in most printed material, and consists of a small loop with an arc over it. Both derive from the majuscule form ⟨A⟩ . In Greek handwriting, it

222-639: A / , / ä / , or / ɑ / . An exception is Saanich , in which ⟨a⟩ —and the glyph ⟨ Á ⟩ —stands for a close-mid front unrounded vowel /e/ . The Latin letters ⟨A⟩ and ⟨a⟩ have Unicode encodings U+0041 A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A and U+0061 a LATIN SMALL LETTER A . These are the same code points as those used in ASCII and ISO 8859 . There are also precomposed character encodings for ⟨A⟩ and ⟨a⟩ with diacritics, for most of those listed above ;

259-464: A triangular head with two horns extended. 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

296-476: A wide variety of writers, writing by hand has been described as a process which enhances expressivity and the discovery of individuality. The act of writing has been described as more "intimate", and the physical manipulation of a writing utensil on another physical medium, such as paper and pen, has been asserted to be more effective in conveying personal experiences and creating writing as art . In comparison to technological methods of printing writing, such as with

333-483: A writing instrument, such as a pen or pencil in the hand . Handwriting includes both block and cursive styles and is separate from generic and formal handwriting script /style, calligraphy or typeface . Because each person's handwriting is unique and different, it can be used to verify a document's writer . The deterioration of a person's handwriting is also a symptom or result of several different diseases. The inability to produce clear and coherent handwriting

370-543: Is a stratified web of interconnected thought processes which relate different cognitive processes to each other in their function of writing in general, and this framework has seen considerable use in pedagological research. For example, underdevelopment of long-term memory, which is in the lower "resource level" of cognitive strata, can then be linked to underdeveloped motor planning for hand-writing individual letters, which bottleneck higher-order cognitive processes such as sentence structure and other critical thinking . For

407-803: Is a type of grapheme , the smallest functional unit within a writing system. Letters are graphemes that broadly correspond to phonemes , the smallest functional units of sound in speech. Similarly to how phonemes are combined to form spoken words, letters may be combined to form written words. A single phoneme may also be represented by multiple letters in sequence, collectively called a multigraph . Multigraphs include digraphs of two letters (e.g. English ch , sh , th ), and trigraphs of three letters (e.g. English tch ). The same letterform may be used in different alphabets while representing different phonemic categories. The Latin H , Greek eta ⟨Η⟩ , and Cyrillic en ⟨Н⟩ are homoglyphs , but represent different phonemes. Conversely,

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444-416: Is also known as dysgraphia . Each person has their own unique style of handwriting, whether it is everyday handwriting or their personal signature. Cultural environment and the characteristics of the written form of the first language that one learns to write are the primary influences on the development of one's own unique handwriting style. Even identical twins who share appearance and genetics do not have

481-456: Is considered to be a separate letter from ⟨n⟩ , though this distinction is not usually recognised in English dictionaries. In computer systems, each has its own code point , U+006E n LATIN SMALL LETTER N and U+00F1 ñ LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH TILDE , respectively. Letters may also function as numerals with assigned numerical values, for example with Roman numerals . Greek and Latin letters have

518-446: Is indicated by the existence of precomposed characters for use with computer systems (for example, ⟨á⟩ , ⟨à⟩ , ⟨ä⟩ , ⟨â⟩ , ⟨ã⟩ .) In the following table, letters from multiple different writing systems are shown, to demonstrate the variety of letters used throughout the world. Handwriting Handwriting is the personal and unique style of writing with

555-644: 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; the figure is around 7.6% in French 11.5% in Spanish, and 14.6% in Portuguese. In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, ⟨a⟩ denotes an open unrounded vowel, such as /

592-623: 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. 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

629-401: The Latin script would come to be used to write many other languages, including English. 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

666-593: The Greek diphthera 'writing tablet' via Etruscan . Until the 19th century, letter was also used interchangeably to refer to a speech segment . Before alphabets, phonograms , graphic symbols of sounds, were used. There were three kinds of phonograms: verbal, pictures for entire words, syllabic, which stood for articulations of words, and alphabetic, which represented signs or letters. The earliest examples of which are from Ancient Egypt and Ancient China, dating to c.  3000 BCE . The first consonantal alphabet emerged around c.  1800 BCE , representing

703-785: The Phoenicians, Semitic workers in Egypt. Their script was originally written and read from right to left. From the Phoenician alphabet came the Etruscan and Greek alphabets. From there, the most widely used alphabet today emerged, Latin, which is written and read from left to right. The Phoenician alphabet had 22 letters, nineteen of which the Latin alphabet used, and the Greek alphabet, adapted c.  900 BCE , added four letters to those used in Phoenician. This Greek alphabet

740-471: The baseline. The influence of medication on the quality of handwriting is not clear. Graphology is the pseudoscientific study and analysis of handwriting in relation to human psychology. Graphology is primarily used as a recruiting tool in the applicant screening process for predicting personality traits and job performance, despite research showing consistently null correlations for these uses. As pen-and-paper assignments remain common throughout

777-560: The century, handwriting practice exercises are still issued by instructors worldwide because handwriting is recognized as a primary tool for the communication of ideas. In order for handwriting to be efficiently utilized by students, it is ideal for the process to be familiar and automatic. Poor handwriting skills and autonomy have been shown to often impair higher-level cognition and creative thinking in children, leading them to become labelled by their instructors as dysgraphic or clumsy. Meta-analysis of classroom assignments also found that

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814-438: The days of handset type for printing presses. Individual letter blocks were kept in specific compartments of drawers in a type case. Capital letters were stored in a higher drawer or upper case. In most alphabetic scripts, diacritics (or accents) are a routinely used. English is unusual in not using them except for loanwords from other languages or personal names (for example, naïve , Brontë ). The ubiquity of this usage

851-629: The distinct forms of ⟨S⟩ , the Greek sigma ⟨Σ⟩ , and Cyrillic es ⟨С⟩ each represent analogous /s/ phonemes. Letters are associated with specific names, which may differ between languages and dialects. Z , for example, is usually called zed outside of the United States, where it is named zee . Both ultimately derive from the name of the parent Greek letter zeta ⟨Ζ⟩ . In alphabets, letters are arranged in alphabetical order , which also may vary by language. In Spanish, ⟨ñ⟩

888-571: The late 7th and early 8th centuries. Finally, many slight letter additions and drops were made to the common alphabet used in the western world. Minor changes were made such as the removal of certain letters, such as thorn ⟨Þ þ⟩ , wynn ⟨Ƿ ƿ⟩ , and eth ⟨Ð ð⟩ . A letter can have multiple variants, or allographs , related to variation in style of handwriting or printing . Some writing systems have two major types of allographs for each letter: an uppercase form (also called capital or majuscule ) and

925-524: 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

962-1061: The legibility of handwriting affects the grading of work as clearer handwriting tends to receive better marks than illegible or messier handwriting, the phenomenon of which has been coined "the presentation effect." In further study, because of the implied importance of handwriting to academic success, considerable research has been conducted into the efficacy of a variety of teaching methods. When quantifying writing fluency through parameters such as writing speed and duration of intermissions, teaching handwriting through digital tablets/technology, individualized instruction, and rote motor practice produced statistically significant increases in legibility and writing fluency which were able to be quantified. Children with specific learning disorders , such as poor/slow handwriting, have been observed in psychological study to follow specific mental frameworks which instructors can use to help pinpoint weakness in linguistic skill and develop their students' fluency and writing composition. The Hayes & Berninger framework

999-758: The letter ⟨a⟩ represents at least seven different vowel sounds, here represented using the vowels of Received Pronunciation , with effects of ⟨r⟩ ignored and mergers in General American mentioned where relevant: 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 . However, ⟨a⟩ occurs in many common digraphs , all with their own sound or sounds, particularly ⟨ai⟩ , ⟨au⟩ , ⟨aw⟩ , ⟨ay⟩ , ⟨ea⟩ and ⟨oa⟩ . ⟨a⟩

1036-450: The letters tend to be larger with wide variability of letters, letter spacing, word spacing, and the alignment of letters on the baseline. Variability of handwriting increases with longer texts. Fluency of the movement is normal but children with ADHD were more likely to make slower movements during the handwriting task and hold the pen longer in the air between movements, especially when they had to write complex letters, implying that planning

1073-411: The middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version is often written in one of two forms: the double-storey | a | and single-storey | ɑ | . The latter 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, a is the indefinite article , with the alternative form an . In English,

1110-443: The movement may take longer. Children who have ADHD were more likely to have difficulty parameterising movements in a consistent way. This has been explained with motor skill impairment either due to lack of attention or lack of inhibition. To anticipate a change of direction between strokes, constant visual attention is essential. With inattention, changes will occur too late, resulting in higher letters and poor alignment of letters on

1147-497: The name of the letter is the long A sound, pronounced / ˈ eɪ / . Its name in most other languages matches the letter's pronunciation in open syllables . The earliest known ancestor of A is aleph —the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet —where it represented a glottal stop [ʔ] , as Phoenician only used consonantal letters. In turn, the ancestor of aleph may have been a pictogram of an ox head in proto-Sinaitic script influenced by Egyptian hieroglyphs , styled as

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1184-410: 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 ,

1221-563: The remainder are produced using combining diacritics . Variant forms of the letter have unique code points for specialist use: the alphanumeric symbols set in mathematics and science, Latin alpha in linguistics, and halfwidth and fullwidth forms for legacy CJK font compatibility. The Cyrillic and Greek homoglyphs of the Latin ⟨A⟩ have separate encodings U+0410 А CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER A and U+0391 Α GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA . [REDACTED] Letter (alphabet) A letter

1258-706: The same handwriting. Characteristics of handwriting include: Developmental dysgraphia is very often accompanied by other learning and/or neurodevelopmental disorder like ADHD. Similarly, people with ADD/ADHD have higher rates of dyslexia . It is unknown how many individuals with ADD/ADHD who also struggle with penmanship actually have undiagnosed specific learning disabilities like developmental dyslexia or developmental dysgraphia causing their handwriting difficulties. Children with ADHD have been found to be more likely to have less legible handwriting, make more spelling errors, more insertions and/or deletions of letters and more corrections. In children with these difficulties,

1295-737: The uncial, and the later semi-uncial. 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,

1332-429: 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

1369-456: Was the first to assign letters not only to consonant sounds, but also to vowels . The Roman Empire further developed and refined the Latin alphabet, beginning around 500 BCE. During the fifth and sixth centuries, the development of lowercase letters began to emerge in Roman writing. At this point, paragraphs, uppercase and lowercase letters, and the concept of sentences and clauses still had not emerged; these final bits of development emerged in

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