U+1D44E "𝑎" Mathematical Italic Small A Unicode Character

U+1D44E "𝑎" Mathematical Italic Small A is a typographic variant of the lowercase letter 'a' that is specifically designated for use in mathematical and scientific notation to distinguish variables and constants from ordinary text. It belongs to the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block, which was introduced to ensure that mathematical expressions remain unambiguous in digital documents, as this italic form helps signify a variable or a parameter rather than a word. This character is especially useful in fields like algebra, calculus, or physics where a single letter often carries a mathematical meaning.

General Properties

Code Point	U+1D44E
Version Added	3.1
Name	Mathematical Italic Small A
Block	Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols
General Category	Lowercase Letter
Canonical Combining Class	Not Reordered
Bidirectional Class	Left To Right
Decomposition Type	Font
Decomposition Mapping	"a" U+0061 Latin Small Letter A

Encodings

HTML Decimal Encoding	𝑎
HTML Hex Encoding	𝑎
UTF-8 Encoding	0xF0 0x9D 0x91 0x8E
UTF-16 Encoding	0xD835 0xDC4E
UTF-32 Encoding	0x0001D44E
C/C++/Java Escape	\ud835\udc4e

Unicode Properties

NFC Quick Check	Yes
NFD Quick Check	Yes
Numeric Type	None
Numeric Value	NaN
Line Break	Alphabetic
Lowercase	Yes
Cased	Yes
Changes When NFKC Casefolded	Yes
NFKC Casefold	"a" U+0061 Latin Small Letter A
NFKC Simple Casefold	"a" U+0061 Latin Small Letter A
Script	Common
Script Extensions	Common
Indic Syllabic Category	Other
ID Start	Yes
XID Start	Yes
ID Continue	Yes
XID Continue	Yes
Alphabetic	Yes
Math	Yes
Other Math	Yes
Vertical Orientation	Rotated
Grapheme Base	Yes
Grapheme Cluster Break	Other
Word Break	Alphabetic letter
Sentence Break	Lower