U+1D6FC "𝛼" Mathematical Italic Small Alpha Unicode Character

U+1D6FC "𝛼" Mathematical Italic Small Alpha is a typographic symbol representing the first letter of the Greek alphabet, alpha, rendered in an italic style specifically for use in mathematical and scientific notation. It belongs to the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block, which was introduced to distinguish mathematical variables from ordinary text. Unlike the standard Greek small alpha (U+03B1), this character is designed to match the italic formatting commonly applied to variables in equations, such as in physics for angular acceleration or in mathematics for angles. Its inclusion in Unicode ensures that documents can maintain consistent and precise notation across different fonts and platforms.

General Properties

Code Point	U+1D6FC
Version Added	3.1
Name	Mathematical Italic Small Alpha
Block	Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols
General Category	Lowercase Letter
Canonical Combining Class	Not Reordered
Bidirectional Class	Left To Right
Decomposition Type	Font
Decomposition Mapping	"α" U+03B1 Greek Small Letter Alpha

Encodings

HTML Decimal Encoding	𝛼
HTML Hex Encoding	𝛼
UTF-8 Encoding	0xF0 0x9D 0x9B 0xBC
UTF-16 Encoding	0xD835 0xDEFC
UTF-32 Encoding	0x0001D6FC
C/C++/Java Escape	\ud835\udefc

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	"α" U+03B1 Greek Small Letter Alpha
NFKC Simple Casefold	"α" U+03B1 Greek Small Letter Alpha
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