text: The Etruscans brought the Greek alphabet to their civilization in the Italian Peninsula and left the letter unchanged.The Romans later adopted the Etruscan alphabet to write the Latin language, and the resulting letter was preserved in the Latin alphabet that would come to be used to write many languages, including English.Typographic variants During Roman times, there were many variant forms of the letter "A".First was the monumental or lapidary style, which was used when inscribing on stone or other "permanent" media.There was also a cursive style used for everyday or utilitarian writing, which was done on more perishable surfaces.Due to the "perishable" nature of these surfaces, there are not as many examples of this style as there are of the monumental, but there are still many surviving examples of different types of cursive, such as majuscule cursive, minuscule cursive, and semicursive minuscule.Variants also existed that were intermediate between the monumental and cursive styles.The known variants include the early semi-uncial, the uncial, and the later semi-uncial.At the end of the Roman Empire (5th century AD), several variants of the cursive minuscule developed through Western Europe.Among these were the semicursive minuscule of Italy, the Merovingian script in France, the Visigothic script in Spain, and the Insular or Anglo-Irish semi-uncial or Anglo-Saxon majuscule of Great Britain.By the ninth century, the Caroline script, which was very similar to the present-day form, was the principal form used in book-making, before the advent of the printing press.This form was derived through a combining of prior forms.15th-century Italy saw the formation of the two main variants that are known today.These variants, the Italic and Roman forms, were derived from the Caroline Script version.The Italic form, also called script a, is used in most current handwriting; it consists of a circle and vertical stroke on the right ("ɑ").