Handwritten style "a"

When people are looking for a handwritten style of the letter “a” they might be tempted to use U+0251 ɑ instead of U+0061 a because it looks more like handwriting. U+0251 ɑ LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA is in Unicode as an IPA symbol. It should not be used instead of an “a”. A font should be used which has a handwritten style “a” at U+0061 a LATIN SMALL LETTER A. If you use U+0251 ɑ LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA you will have unexpected results with data analysis as well as when using uppercase/lowercase pairs.

This article formerly appeared on ScriptSource.