Letter 02 of 52
Lowercase a in Cursive
Write a clear lowercase a in cursive, with examples you can follow and a free printable practice sheet.
Practice sheets
Free printable lowercase a cursive worksheets for tracing, copying, and joining letters. A4 portrait · PDF.
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Practice lowercase a
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LETTER WORKSHEET · a
SETUP
CURRENT STYLE Dancing Script
WORKSHEET PREVIEW
A4
Practice lowercase a
Connections
Connect lowercase a
Cursive flows through the spaces between letters. Practice a with common next letters to make the transition feel smoother and more natural.
Letter guide
How to write lowercase a in cursive
Stroke by stroke
- In a word, a arrives on an upstroke from the previous letter. Let that upstroke run past the oval’s starting point to just below the midline, at about two o’clock.
- Pull back to the left and down into a counterclockwise oval that touches the baseline and climbs back to the start.
- Close the oval, then retrace straight down its right side to the baseline.
- Swing out on a small upward curve that rises toward the midline for the next letter.
Common mistakes
- Gap at the top. An oval that does not close turns a into u, so “cat” reads as “cut”. Touch the starting point before you retrace.
- Separate stem. Lifting the pen and adding the stem as a second stroke leaves a visible seam, and the stem often drifts away from the oval. Retrace in one motion.
- Oval too round. A wide, round oval breaks the slant of the word. Make the oval narrow and lean it in the same direction as your other letters.
Easy to confuse with
Lowercase a is most often misread as o, u or d. An o closes without a downstroke and exits high at the midline; u has an open top; d uses the same oval but its stem climbs to the top line before coming down.
Joining to the next letter
Lowercase a ends low, so most joins out of it rise from the baseline. In an, the exit climbs into the first hump of n. At needs a slightly taller exit for the stem of t. In ar, the exit turns into the small shoulder of r, and in al it keeps climbing all the way to the top of the loop.
Practice words
- andand
- catcat
- bananabanana
- gardengarden
- alwaysalways
- traveltravel
Questions about lowercase a
Should lowercase a have a lead-in stroke?
At the start of a word, many school styles begin a with a short upward curve from the baseline. Inside a word the previous letter supplies that curve, so the lead-in disappears into the join.
Why does my cursive a look like a u?
The oval is not closing. Slow down at the top of the oval and make sure the stroke meets its starting point before you pull down the stem.
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