Talk:A

This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Writing systems Low‑importance This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Writing systems, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage and content of articles relating to writing systems on Wikipedia. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project’s talk page.Writing systemsWikipedia:WikiProject Writing systemsTemplate:WikiProject Writing systemsWriting system articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Spoken Wikipedia This article is within the scope of WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles that are spoken on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Spoken WikipediaWikipedia:WikiProject Spoken WikipediaTemplate:WikiProject Spoken WikipediaSpoken Wikipedia articles

Daily pageviews of this article A graph should have been displayed here but graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at pageviews.wmcloud.org

Archives

1, 2

@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)[reply]

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.

talk) 15:31, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

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)[reply]

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)[reply

]

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)[reply]

After seeing the rationale, I agree that it should be placed later in the article. However, I still am opposed to outright deletion though.

talk) 00:18, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply

]

2 27.68.212.69 (talk) 00:08, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

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

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

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

 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)[reply

]

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

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

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your 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)[reply]

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

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

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: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: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.

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Half- and fullwidth form: Bold, revert, discuss

Fullwidth characters should also be mentioned because

Nickps (talk) 23:20, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply

]

So. in theory, glyphs should be mentioned according to

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)[reply

]

And

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

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)[reply

]

Your proposal looks good to me. Someone will just have to retarget the fullwidth letter redirects to

Nickps (talk) 11:40, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply

]

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)[reply

]

So wait, I'm getting the feeling that

WP:A? will be a co-nomination. Remsense诉 14:06, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply

]

That's the one I meant too.

Nickps (talk) 14:18, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply

]

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

So I'm not sure what the absolute best approach here is. Full disclosure, I've officially embarked on making

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??