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.
Contents
Anarchism
The symbol is a recognizable icon used by many people who identify or sympathize with anarchism. Despite the history of militaristic use, by the dawn of the 21st century the enclosed A has largely supplanted the traditional Black Flag as the most-used anarchist symbol. Peter Marshall an author, philosopher and BBC television producer wrote that it represented the idea (as advanced by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon 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.
United States military
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.
Encodings
The symbols are encoded in Unicode at
Ⓐ · UTF-8 encoding: e2 92 b6)ⓐ · UTF-8 encoding: e2 93 90).