: Styles of the Lowercase "a" I've noticed that many posters, advertisements, etc -- as well as many fonts -- use the lowercase letter "a" as shown in "figure 1". However, I've always hand-written
I've noticed that many posters, advertisements, etc -- as well as many fonts -- use the lowercase letter "a" as shown in "figure 1". However, I've always hand-written it as what it looks like in "figure 2". Over the last few weeks, I've noticed that I almost never seen the second version in application. It doesn't seem to be a serif/sans issue, as I've seen plenty of sans serif fonts that use a variation of the first "a".
Is there a reason for this? Why are there two very-different versions of the same letter? Is there a reason why the first one is much more prevalent in fonts and graphic-applications?
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It seems that single story "a"'s are rare in serif typefaces except for italic versions. Most sans serifs also use double story "a"'s except for geometric typefaces (which are usually used for display). At text sizes the single story "a" can appear too similar to an "o" and break the fluidity of reading.
Historically, the single storey a was the italics version, as it more emulated handwriting.
Many geometric sans faces also adopted the single storey version.
But there's no hard-and-fast rule one way or the other. Both are acceptable glyphs.
I think it merely comes down to whatever UI font the OS chooses to use.
There's no specific reason one is used over the other except that's how the font designer chose to create the lowercase a.
You could just as easily ask why any character varies between fonts -- it was a choice of the designer.
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