What ㅏ means
It represents the vowel romanized as a. Hangul was created for writing Korean speech; its creation was recorded in 1443, and an explanatory book called Hunminjeongeum appeared in 1446. ㅏ was among the script’s original vowels. Its shape combines ㆍ, an older dot-shaped vowel, with the vertical stroke ㅣ.
In a written syllable, ㅏ joins an initial ㅇ, which is silent there, to form 아. The vowel sound is the same in ㅏ and 아; a standalone ㅏ may simply be shown as an isolated letter.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does ㅏ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type ㅏ
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 314F, then Alt+X to get ㅏ.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “hangul letter a”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 314f, then Enter or Space.
HTML
ㅏCSS
\314FStandard Korean 2-set keyboard
With the Korean input method active, press K for ㅏ. Press ㅇ then ㅏ to compose 아.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
ㅏ
HTML hex
ㅏ
CSS content
content: "\314F";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E3%85%8F
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.