U+1D5BA "𝖺" Mathematical Sans-Serif Small A Unicode Character

U+1D5BA "𝖺" Mathematical Sans-Serif Small A is a typographic symbol belonging to the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block, designed for use in mathematical and scientific notation where a sans-serif style is required for the lowercase letter 'a'. It was added to the Unicode Standard as part of version 3.1 in 2001 to support the clear distinction between variables, constants, and other textual elements in formulas, helping to avoid confusion with similar-looking characters from other scripts or styles. This character retains the same semantic meaning as the standard Latin small letter 'a' but is intended specifically for mathematical contexts where font styling conveys additional information, such as in vector or matrix notation.

General Properties

Code Point	U+1D5BA
Version Added	3.1
Name	Mathematical Sans-Serif 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 0x96 0xBA
UTF-16 Encoding	0xD835 0xDDBA
UTF-32 Encoding	0x0001D5BA
C/C++/Java Escape	\ud835\uddba

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