Latin Small Letter A
The first letter of the Latin alphabet and one of the most frequent characters in English text. It functions as both a vowel and a standalone word — the indefinite article ('a dog', 'a moment'). In computing, it serves as a hexadecimal digit representing the value 10, appearing in color codes, memory addresses, and cryptographic hashes. Its ASCII code point is 97 (0x61), positioned 32 above uppercase 'A' at 65 (0x41) — a single-bit difference enabling efficient case conversion.
Technical Details
Code Example
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char c = 'a';int index = c - 'a'; // Standard idiom to map char to 0-25 index// index == 0
Common Usage
Text frequency: In typical English corpora, 'a' accounts for roughly 8 % of all characters. It is also the only vowel that serves as a complete word — the indefinite article — making it one of the most typed characters in any Latin-script language.
Hexadecimal notation: Lowercase 'a' through 'f' represent values 10–15 in hex. This makes 'a' a constant presence in CSS color values (#aa00ff), UUIDs, SHA digests, and raw memory addresses.
Efficient case conversion: In ASCII, 'a' (0x61) and 'A' (0x41) differ only in bit 5 (0x20). Toggling that single bit flips case — a well-known optimization used in parsers, embedded firmware, and performance-critical string processing among A–Z / a–z.
Diacritical base glyph: Numerous Latin-script languages extend 'a' with diacritics — à, á, â, ä, å, ã, ą among others — making it one of the most widely modified base characters in Unicode.
Text frequency: In typical English corpora, 'a' accounts for roughly 8 % of all characters. It is also the only vowel that serves as a complete word — the indefinite article — making it one of the most typed characters in any Latin-script language.
Hexadecimal notation: Lowercase 'a' through 'f' represent values 10–15 in hex. This makes 'a' a constant presence in CSS color values (#aa00ff), UUIDs, SHA digests, and raw memory addresses.
Efficient case conversion: In ASCII, 'a' (0x61) and 'A' (0x41) differ only in bit 5 (0x20). Toggling that single bit flips case — a well-known optimization used in parsers, embedded firmware, and performance-critical string processing among A–Z / a–z.
Diacritical base glyph: Numerous Latin-script languages extend 'a' with diacritics — à, á, â, ä, å, ã, ą among others — making it one of the most widely modified base characters in Unicode.