[3] The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar.

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.

[6] At the end of the Roman Empire (5th century AD), several variants of the cursive minuscule developed through Western Europe.

[4] The Roman form ⟨a⟩ is found in most printed material, and consists of a small loop with an arc over it.

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.

Graphic designers refer to the Italic and Roman forms as single-decker a and double decker a respectively.

In modern English orthography, 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.

⟨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.