Talk:A

Removal of the gifs and See below

@Future Perfect at Sunrise: Why were the gifs removed? I thought they were fine and were a nice addition to the pages. Saying they were ugly feels really unfair and bias. LeGoldenBoots (talk) 14:49, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

IMO, they should be included in the article. The GIF provides useful information on how the strokes in the letter 'a' are formed. It also provides cursive variants of the letter 'a' and is a handy snippet of information. I think this change needs consensus before re-adding. Carpimaps (talk) 15:31, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

First, animated gifs are almost always problematic – they are visually distracting, and they are useless in non-online presentation forms of articles (e.g. print spin-offs etc). For this particular set, they just give undue weight to one particular form of each letter that is actually quite marginal. These are not "the" cursive form; they represent one cursive form that has been used in one particular tradition of school-teaching in one single country in the world for a few decades (the "D'Nealian" method, used in US schools). Why pick out this one form of the letters and give it pride of place in the infoboxes? Why not other forms that were actually far more impactful historically – what about the uncial? the Carolingian minuscule? The Fraktur? the Italic? the Kurrent? There are dozens upon dozens of characteristic styles of handwriting for each letter. Why pick out this particular model that's relevant for nobody except American school children? And then include it without even an informative caption telling the reader what it is?

I have no objection to re-adding them somewhere further down in the article, if they can be contextualized there through comparison with other representative styles, but really this should just be handled on the page where it belongs, at D'Nealian. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:04, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

After seeing the article with and without the animated cursive letter, the article is better without. The animation can be included further down, but not in the infobox. The animation implies that this is the "correct" way to draw a cursive letter. We have no business being so prescriptive, and we have a policy on this: WP:NOTHOWTO. ~Anachronist (talk) 16:47, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree. It should be placed somewhere else other than the infobox and indicated that it is the D'Nealian method more clearly than it was before. Deletion is way too harsh. LeGoldenBoots (talk) 02:23, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

After seeing the rationale, I agree that it should be placed later in the article. However, I still am opposed to outright deletion though. Carpimaps (talk) 00:18, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Somebody fix the glyph

Modern Italic A

Modern Italic A (scaled to 25%)

In A#Typographic variants, the image of "Modern italic A" is truncated, cutting off the right half of the lowercase 'a'. ~Anachronist (talk) 01:13, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Looks ok to me? I have added a thumbnail here, are you seeing the same issue? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:07, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Curious. Where it is resized, I see an entire single-storey a; otherwise I see the first half of a two-storey a. Perhaps the svg's specification of a font is flawed. —Tamfang (talk) 04:31, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

I think we should change the svg, because I am having the exact same problem Aoscf77 (talk) 12:48, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I have now added a reduced (to 25% of default) size image on the left and it still looks ok. Surely once the .svg has been made, that's it? SVGs are not dynamic, afaik, certainly not this one. What you see is what they get? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:18, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Here is the table again, except that I've moved the italic As to the left.

Typographic variants include a double-storey a and single-storey ɑ.

Blackletter A	Uncial A	Another Blackletter A
Modern Italic A	Modern Roman A	Modern script A

Is the Roman a affected instead?--𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:18, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I see the italic A exactly the same, all the other ones are fine. Aoscf77 (talk) 13:26, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Looks like the File:Modern Italic A.svg just contains a text span with a string of "Aa" and font setting of "Times New Roman", which isn't a supported free font available to the MediaWiki renderer. This should be replaced with a graphical path. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:38, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I've done this now; display should be fixed once the cache is updated. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:41, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 December 2023

154.121.107.69 (talk) 13:49, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Liu1126 (talk) 15:16, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Change

You could add “a use in kids literacy is A is for apple” or something similar Notsayingmyname (talk) 02:33, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

 Done 3df (talk) 04:43, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Edit request

Please change the word vowel to vowel letter in the lead sentence to maintain the consistency. 2001:EE0:4BC7:E310:B50C:773B:1A40:16BA (talk) 10:52, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

 Done GrayStorm^{Talk Contributions} 20:47, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of section in this and all the alphabet

The article has a section (#Computing) that contains this table:

Character information

Preview	A		a		ɑ
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A		LATIN SMALL LETTER A		LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	65	U+0041	97	U+0061	593	U+0251
UTF-8	65	41	97	61	201 145	C9 91
Numeric character reference	A	A	a	a	ɑ	ɑ
EBCDIC family	193	C1	129	81
ASCII 1	65	41	97	61

¹ Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

IMO, this is pedantic clutter in any case but specifically:

• Tables are difficult for visitors using screen readers
• The information is mathematically trivial: if anyone really needs to convert hex to decimal, there are many apps that will do it.
• The first 127 codepoints of ASCII and Unicode are identical, as is well known and is readily available from either article.
• The UTF-8 line is a WP:NOTMANUAL, WP:CFORK and WP:UNDUE violation. Anybody who wanted that info would start with the UTF-8 article
• The "numeric character reference" line is even more trivial (and useless: would anybody put that in a html page unless they were obfuscating?
• EBCDIC line is another WP:NOTMANUAL, WP:CFORK and even more WP:UNDUE violation. Anybody who wanted that info would start with the EBCDIC article
• It is off-topic and UNDUE to get bogged down in the details of specific operating systems, let alone their codepages or equivalent legacy overhangs.

Conversely, the section has no reference to á, à, â, ã, ä, å etc etc

So, unless there is a consensus to keep it, I propose to replace it with:

• U+0041 A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A
• U+0061 a LATIN SMALL LETTER A
• U+0251 ɑ LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA

I guess it is the subject of another proposal, but we should consider at least recognising that that most languages that use the Latin alphabet use diacritics with the letter ⟨A⟩ and ⟨a⟩. Comments? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:04, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree; I've always found these tables quite cumbersome. I believe part of the problem with them is that they were initially designed to display just the uppercase and lowercase forms of the main topic letter itself, e.g. "A" and "a", so they'd only have two columns, but then somebody started to add entries for all sorts of derived letters and variants to them, ending up with tables that had a lot more columns than they had rows, which was always awkward and difficult to read. I also agree most of the information is either trivial or distracting or both. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:31, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Agree with the decluttering—if we're really needing some additional information, we can add it back with avoiding clutter in mind. Remsense诉 09:21, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Agree that a lot of the information in these tables is superfluous, but rather than trying to update the hundreds of pages that use the template it's probably better to update the template itself. Recommend moving this discussion to Template_talk:Charmap. I don't think it's necessary to cover á, à, â, ã, ä, å, etc. because these are covered in their respective articles, linked in the "Related characters" section immediately above. Mibblepedia (talk) 20:11, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Half- and fullwidth form: Bold, revert, discuss

Subsection break added retrospectively

Fullwidth characters should also be mentioned because Ａ and ａ redirect here. I added them to the #Computing section and I will add them to the tables for the other letters too for consistency with O but I wouldn't be opposed to move them to #Related_characters either. Nickps (talk) 23:20, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

So. in theory, glyphs should be mentioned according to WP:V and WP:NPOV. Inclusion in Unicode counts a little bit towards both, but I think it suffices to say a mention of every code poinr in TUS graphically or otherwise related to ⟨A⟩ would be undue in this article. So, I really want to get serious here, per my project stated below: what does the best encyclopedia article about a letter of the Latin alphabet consist of. esp that's not already here? Remsense诉 00:00, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

And WP:DUE. So sorry, Nickps, but I'm afraid I also disagree with your addition of the half- and fullwidth form because it qualifies (IMO) as "specialist use" or even "obsolescent". It was for that reason that I considered inappropriate to add the detail spelling out of U+1D538 𝔸 MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL A and U+0251 ɑ LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA to Variant forms of the letter have codepoints for specialist use in mathematics and in linguistics. So I have reverted your edit pending the outcome of this WP:BRD debate.

But may I make a compromise proposal? How about a revision of that "variant forms" sentence, so that it reads Variant forms of the letter have codepoints for specialist use in mathematics, in linguistics and for legacy CJK font compatibility. The addition of wikilinks makes it less cryptic and easier to explore. Better? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:24, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Your proposal looks good to me. Someone will just have to retarget the fullwidth letter redirects to halfwidth and fullwidth forms (I can do it if no one else wants to On second thought, since fullwidth characters are still mentioned in this article, I won't be retargeting Ａ through Ｚ. If anyone disagrees they can do it themselves 17:00, 7 April 2024 (UTC) ). Nickps (talk) 11:40, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

TYVM, appreciated. Actually my first (mental) draft had that as target but I thought that the article fullwidth is pitched better for a lay readership. But I don't have a strong preference, so unless anyone wants to debate it we can go with that version later today. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:39, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

So wait, I'm getting the feeling that A for WP:A? will be a co-nomination. Remsense诉 14:06, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

That's the one I meant too. Halfwidth and fullwidth forms != halfwidth and fullwidth forms (Unicode block). Nickps (talk) 14:18, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

 Done --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:32, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Formatting consensus

So I'm not sure what the absolute best approach here is. Full disclosure, I've officially embarked on making ISO basic Latin alphabet a Good topic—except for this article, which I will be pursuing A-class status for—and I want to discuss what the best consistent formatting might be, or consistency on layout and content in general! Should there be a notation difference between graphs and glyphs? I'm not sure that's necessary. Remsense诉 19:18, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi Remsense, I'm also interested in improving articles about the alphabet. I've been experimenting with altering the infobox, and you can check out what I have so far in my sandbox. It's just a prototype and nothing's set in stone (and it's missing a lot), so let me know if you have any ideas or anything. The finished infobox should apply to all graphemes eventually, such as including accented characters, Greek letters, etc. 3df (talk) 22:47, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Wow, that's pretty nifty at first glance! Further thoughts as I have them. Remsense诉 22:54, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I think you need to explain further what you have in mind. Maybe do a mockup in a sandbox as a basis for discussion?

Linguistics distinguishes between graphemes and glyphs (atm, the article doesn't mention "graphs", btw). A 'compare and contrast' homograph and homoglyph might be relevant??