Enclosed A

Not to be confused with At sign (@).

The circle-A, commonly used as a symbol for anarchism.

Enclosed A or circled Latin A (Ⓐ, ⓐ) is a typographical symbol. It is an "A" within a circle, and it occurs alongside many other enclosed alphanumerics.

Uses

An A within a circle was adopted as a symbol by the United States Third Army (now the United States Army Central) in the early 20th century.

The shoulder sleeve insignia of the United States Third Army.

Anarchism

Nowadays, the symbol might be most recognised as an icon used by many people who identify or sympathize with anarchism. Despite the militaristic use noted above, by the dawn of the 21st century the enclosed A had largely supplanted the traditional Black Flag as the most-used symbol of that body of thought. Peter Marshall an author, philosopher and BBC television producer wrote that it represented the idea (as advanced by Peter Kropotkin and other anarchist theorists) that "Anarchy is Order"; early incarnations of the anarchist icon were expressed with an unenclosed A (Anarchy) superimposed over the O (Order) before evolving into the more formal form used modernly.^[1]

Encodings

• The capitalized symbol (Ⓐ) can be generated with the unicode encoding "U+24B6" and the UTF-8 (hex.) encoding, "e2 92 b6".
• The lower case symbol (ⓐ) can be generated with the unicode encoding "U+24D0" and the UTF-8 (hex.) encoding "e2 93 90".

See also

	Anarchism portal
	Typography portal
	United States Army portal

• Anarchist symbolism — Circle-A
• Anarchist symbolism — Black Flag
• United States Army Central

References

1. ^ Marshall, Peter. Demanding the Impossible. Fontana, London. 1993. p. 558

External links