À

À, à (a-grave) is a letter of the Catalan, Emilian-Romagnol, French, Italian, Maltese, Occitan, Portuguese, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, and Welsh languages consisting of the letter A of the ISO basic Latin alphabet and a grave accent. À is also used in Pinyin transliteration. In most languages, it represents the vowel a. This letter is also a letter in Taos to indicate a mid tone.

Latin letter A with grave

In accounting or invoices, à abbreviates "at a rate of": "5 apples à $1" (one dollar each). That usage is based upon the French preposition à and has evolved into the at sign (@). Sometimes, it is part of a surname: Thomas à Kempis, Mary Anne à Beckett.

Usage in various languages

Emilian-Romagnol

À is used in Emilian to represent short stressed [a], e.g. Bolognese dialect sacàtt [saˈkatː] "sack".

French

The grave accent is used in the French language to differentiate homophones, e.g. the third person conjugation of a "[he/she/it] has" and à "at, in, and to".

Portuguese

À is used in Portuguese to represent a contraction of the feminine singular definite article A with the preposition A:

Ele foi à praia.
He went to the beach.

Character mappings

Character information
PreviewÀà
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH GRAVE LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH GRAVE
Encodingsdecimalhexdechex
Unicode192U+00C0224U+00E0
UTF-8195 128C3 80195 160C3 A0
Numeric character referenceÀÀàà
Named character referenceÀà
ISO 8859-1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16192C0224E0

Microsoft Windows users can type an "à" by pressing Alt+133 or Alt+0224 on the numeric pad of the keyboard. "À" can be typed by pressing Alt+0192. On a Mac, you hold ⌥ Option+`, and then let go and type a.

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