Enclosed A

"Circle-A" redirects here. For A overscribed on a circle, see the anarchy symbol.

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

United States military

The shoulder sleeve insignia of the United States Third Army.

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.

Anarchism

The symbol is a recognizable 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 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.

Encodings

The symbols are encoded in Unicode at

• U+24B6 Ⓐ CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A (UTF-8 encoding: e2 92 b6)
• U+24D0 ⓐ CIRCLED LATIN SMALL LETTER A (UTF-8 encoding: e2 93 90).

See also

• Anarchist symbolism — Circle-A