The anarchy symbol in text is Ⓐ, Circled Latin capital letter A, U+24B6. Unicode has no character named for anarchy, so the circled letter stands in. The 13 rows add other ringed and boxed A's, the black flag and the black cat.
Read the full guide
Why no character has the A running past the circle
The hand-drawn sign is a capital A in a circle, first seen in Western Europe in the early 1960s, and the punk version lets the legs of the A cross the ring. Unicode only encodes a letter inside its circle, so Ⓐ is the closest. A⃝ is a plain A with a combining circle round it, which some fonts draw larger.
Tips
Ⓐ has no emoji form, so it takes the colour and size of your words. 🅰, the blood type A, is an emoji.
The black flag comes twice: 🏴 is the emoji and ⚑ is plain text for a name field that drops emoji.
In HTML, write Ⓐ as Ⓐ or Ⓐ. It has no named entity and no Alt code.
Questions and answers
How do I type the anarchist symbol as text?
Copy Ⓐ from the first row: it is an ordinary character, U+24B6, so it pastes into a bio, a name or a chat like a letter. On a keyboard it has no key; HTML writes it Ⓐ.
What does the circle in the anarchy symbol mean?
Some anarchists read it as the letter O, for order or organisation, echoing the line that society seeks order in anarchy. One of the people who drew it first has said that meaning was never discussed when it was made.
What other symbols stand for anarchism?
The black flag, which is older than the circled A, and the black cat. Both are here as emoji, 🏴 and 🐈⬛, and the flag also as the text character ⚑. Punk bands made the circled A red in the 1970s.
A⃝A in a combining circleMade of U+0041 and U+20DD. A plain A with a combining enclosing circle drawn round it. How well the circle fits depends on the font.
ⒶCircled Latin capital letter AU+24B6. The usual anarchy symbol in text: a capital A in a circle. It is a plain character, not an emoji, so it takes the colour of your words.
ⓐCircled Latin small letter aU+24D0. The small letter in a circle, for a lighter mark.
🅐Negative circled Latin capital letter AU+1F150. A white A in a filled black circle. Unicode 6.0, so older devices may show a box.
a⃝Small a in a combining circleMade of U+0061 and U+20DD. The same trick with a small a.
A in brackets and squares 5
🅰Negative squared Latin capital letter AU+1F170. A white A in a black square. It is also an emoji, so a phone may draw it in colour.
🅰︎Negative squared Latin capital letter A, text styleU+1F170 U+FE0E. The same A with the text-style selector, which asks for the black and white shape.
🄐Parenthesized Latin capital letter AU+1F110. A capital A in brackets.
⒜Parenthesized Latin small letter aU+249C. A small a in brackets.
🄰Squared Latin capital letter AU+1F130. A capital A in a square.
Black flag and black cat 3
🐈⬛Black catU+1F408 U+200D U+2B1B. The black cat emoji, the third of the usual anarchist signs. Emoji 13.0.
⚑Black flagU+2691. A small black flag that is text, not an emoji.
🏴Waving black flagU+1F3F4. The black flag emoji, the older anarchist sign. Emoji 1.0.