text: This slowly developed from the fifth-century form resembling the Greek letter tau in the hands of medieval Irish and English writers.The Roman form is used in most printed material; it consists of a small loop with an arc over it ("a").Both derive from the majuscule (capital) form.In Greek handwriting, it was common to join the left leg and horizontal stroke into a single loop, as demonstrated by the uncial version shown.Many fonts then made the right leg vertical.In some of these, the serif that began the right leg stroke developed into an arc, resulting in the printed form, while in others it was dropped, resulting in the modern handwritten form.Graphic designers refer to the Italic and Roman forms as "single decker a" and "double decker a" respectively.Italic type is commonly used to mark emphasis or more generally to distinguish one part of a text from the rest (set in Roman type).There are some other cases aside from italic type where script a ("ɑ"), also called Latin alpha, is used in contrast with Latin "a" (such as in the International Phonetic Alphabet).Use in writing systems English In modern English orthography, the letter represents at least seven different vowel sounds: the near-open front unrounded vowel as in pad; the open back unrounded vowel as in father, which is closer to its original Latin and Greek sound; the diphthong as in ace and major (usually when is followed by one, or occasionally two, consonants and then another vowel letter) – this results from Middle English lengthening followed by the Great Vowel Shift; the modified form of the above sound that occurs before , as in square and Mary; the rounded vowel of water; the shorter rounded vowel (not present in General American) in was and what; a schwa, in many unstressed syllables, as in about, comma, solar.The double sequence does not occur in native English words, but is found in some words derived from foreign languages such as Aaron and aardvark.