Lots of adjectives in Italian correspond to adjectives in English and vice versa, but sometimes an adjective form doesn't really exist in one language or the other, and a different form is used. One such form uses a (which is usually a preposition meaning "to" or "at") plus a noun. In this case, we might say this a stands for "in the manner of" or "with." It can be part of the answer to questions such as "What's it like?" "What kind is it?"

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One example of this came up in this week's episode of La Ladra. It occurred in a rather banal exchange between Gina and her husband. He couldn't find his striped socks.

In English, we can say something is striped or it has stripes. In Italian, it's a bit different. We often use a. 

Come dove stanno i calzini a righe?

What do you mean where are the striped socks?

Caption 3, La Ladra - Ep. 4 - Una magica bionda

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Potrebbe anche essere una tovaglia a quadretti bianchi e rossi,

It could also be a red and white checked tablecloth,

oppure bianchi e gialli o a grosse righe.

or else, white and yellow or with wide stripes.

Captions 6-7, Come preparare con creatività - una tavola per la campagna

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In Italy, quaderni a quadretti (notebooks with grids or graph paper) are very popular. But in the U.S., unless you are using a grid for a specific purpose, like math or a making a chart, most notebooks are a righe (lined). There doesn't even seem to be a standard translation for a quadretti regarding paper. However, we asked readers to write in what they would call un quaderno a quadretti in English.

Update: Most of the people who have written in say that in English, they would call a quaderno a quadretti a "graph paper notebook." One person provided this interesting link.

Additional notes: Along with notebooks, we have notepads. The official word for this in Italian is taccuino but the more commonly-used term is a corruption of English: bloc-notes or even the pseudo-English block-notes. Make sure you pronounce the final e and s all'italiano! Let's remember that in Italian the adjective usually comes after the noun, and so notes is the kind of blocco (notebook or notepad for taking notes). A blocco is a group of similar items, so we use blocco or, when it's small, blocchetto for paper, for checks: blocchetto di assegni (checkbook).

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In this lesson, we have talked about adjective equivalents. But there are adverb equivalents that use a, too, and we'll look at them in a future lesson.