At sign
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225665427
2008-07-14T20:20:23Z
AnonMoos
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/* Modern uses */ linkfix
{{Improvereferences|date=December 2007}}
{{Punctuation marks|@}}
The typographic character '''@''', the '''at sign''', denotes a pan-lingual abbreviation of the word 'at'. It began use as the shorthand for the phrase "''at the rate of''" in [[accounting]] and commercial [[invoice]]s, e.g. “7 [[Widget (economics)|widget]]s @ $2 ea. = $14”. Nowadays, this commercial character is [[ubiquity|ubiquitous]] because of its use in [[e-mail]] addresses. In English, it is informally pronounced as ''at'', and can be referred to as the ''at sign'' or the ''at symbol''. Its official, typographic character nomenclature is '''commercial at''' in the [[American National Standards Institute|ANSI]]/[[CCITT]]/[[Unicode]] character encoding standards. Some historical names are mentioned in the "[[#History|History]]" section below.
== History ==
[[Image:1674 liten.jpg|300px|thumb|left|Evidence of the usage of @ to signify [[French language|French]] "{{lang|fr|à}}" (meaning "at") from a [[1674]] protocol from a [[Sweden|Swedish]] [[lower court]] and [[magistrate]] ({{lang|sv|''[[Arboga]] rådhusrätt och magistrat''}})]]
These are some theories about the origin of the ''commercial at'' character in modern usage:
* Medieval monks abbreviated the Latin word {{lang|la|''ad''}} (at, toward, by, about) next to a [[numeral]].
* It was a 15th-century [[Spain|Spanish]] unit of weight: [[arroba]] = [[jar]].
* The abbreviated [[Greek language|Greek]] preposition ''ανά'', ''ana'', meaning ''at the rate of'', its commercial usage.
* An [[Italy|Italian]] [[Academia|academic]] claims to have traced the @ symbol to the [[Italian Renaissance]], in a Venetian mercantile document signed by [[Francesco Lapi]] on [[May 4]], [[1537]].<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,348744,00.html merchant@florence wrote it first 500 years ago | Technology | The Guardian<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> The document is about commerce with [[Pizarro]], in particular the price of an @ of wine in [[Peru]]; @ meant [[amphora]] ([[Italian language|Italian]] ''{{lang|it|anfora}};'' [[Spanish language|Spanish]] and [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]] ''arroba''). Currently, the word ''arroba'' means the at-symbol and a unit of weight (cf. below). In this usage, the symbol represents one amphora, a unit of weight and volume based upon the capacity of the standard [[terracotta]] jar, and entered modern meaning and use as "at the rate of" in northern Europe.
* From Norman French "à" meaning "at" in the "each" sense, i.e. "2 [[widget (economics)|widget]]s à £5.50 = £11.00" is the [[accountancy]] shorthand notation in [[English (people)|English]] commercial [[voucher]]s and [[ledger]]s to the 1990s, when the e-mail usage superseded the accountancy usage. It also is so used in Modern French and Swedish; in this view, the at-symbol is a stylised form of à that avoids raising the writing hand from the page in drawing the symbol; this compromise between @ and à in French handwriting is in street market signs.
* It could be the abbreviation of any word beginning in ''a''.
The @ was present in the 1902 model Lambert typewriter made by Lambert Typewriter Company of New York. Its inclusion in the original 1963 ASCII character set went unremarked as it was a standard commercial typewriter character, e.g. the 1961 [[IBM Selectric typewriter]]'s keyboard included the @ (at-symbol).
== Modern uses ==
[[Image:At-sign evolution.svg|thumb|240px|left|A theoretical evolution of the at-sign]]
In contemporary English usage, @ is a commercial symbol, meaning ''at'' and ''at the rate of''. It has been used, rarely, in financial documents or grocers' price tags, and is not used in standard [[typography]].<ref>[[Robert Bringhurst|Bringhurst, Robert]] (2002). ''[[The Elements of Typographic Style]]'' (version 2.5), p.272. Vancouver: Hartley & Marks. ISBN 0-88179-133-4.</ref>
Its most familiar contemporary use is in [[e-mail address]]es (transmitted by [[Simple Mail Transfer Protocol|SMTP]]), as in ''jdoe@example.com'' (the user ''jdoe'' working ''at'' the computer named ''example'' in the domain ''com''). [[Ray Tomlinson]] is credited with introducing this usage in 1971.<ref>[http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20010824.html Who sent the first e-mail?]</ref> This idea of the symbol representing ''located at'' in the form "user@host" also is seen in other tools and protocols: the command <code>ssh jdoe@www.example.com</code> tries to establish a [[secure shell|ssh]] connection to the computer with the [[hostname]] www.example.com using the username jdoe.
The @ is used in various [[programming language]]s though there is not a consistent theme to its usage. For example, in [[Perl]], @ prefixes [[variable]]s which contain [[array]]s; in [[PHP]], it is used just before a [[subroutine|function]] to make the [[Interpreter (computing)|interpreter]] suppress errors that would be generated when using that function; in [[C Sharp (programming language)|C#]], @ is the [[literal string]] [[operator (programming)|operator]] meaning that the string should be used "as is" and not be processed for escape sequences; in [[Python (programming language)|Python]] 2.4 and up, it is used to decorate a function (wrap the function in another one at creation time); in [[Java (programming language)|Java]], it is used to denote annotations, a kind of metadata, since version 5.0; in [[Ruby (programming language)|Ruby]], @ prefixes [[instance variable]]s, and @@ prefixes [[class variable]]s.
In [[modal logic]], specifically when representing [[possible worlds]], @ is sometimes used as a logical symbol to denote the actual world (the world we are 'at').
The @ is used as an [[Alternative political spellings#.22.40.22 replacing .22A.22 and.2For .22O.22|alternative political spelling]] for typing in some [[Romance languages]] as a [[Gender neutral|gender-neutral]] substitute for the masculine "o" in mixed sex groups and in cases where the sex is unknown. For example, the Portuguese/Spanish word "amigos" (friends), which can mean men and women friends or all men friends would be replaced with "amig@s". The character is intended to resemble a digraph of both the masculine letter "o" and the feminine letter "a". The usefulness of this is debatable; in Portuguese/Spanish, the masculine [[grammatical gender]] may include both men and women, while the feminine gender is exclusively for and about women; there is no neuter gender for most nouns. Some advocates of [[gender-neutral language|gender-neutral language-modification]] feel that using the male grammatical gender as a generic gender designator indicates implicit linguistic disregard for women. Many Portuguese/Spanish speakers think that this usage of the @ (at-sign) degrades Portuguese/Spanish; some argue it is just more [[cultural imperialism]]; generally, this construction is used only in personal, informal writing, and has no established pronunciation. Alternative forms would be ''amigos/as'' and ''amigⒶs'' using the [[Anarchist symbolism#Circle-A|circle-A]] of anarchism as the bisexual digraph.
In most [[roguelike]] games (e.g. ''[[Angband (video game)|Angband]]'' and ''[[NetHack]]''), @ denotes the player character. Some roguelikes also use @ to denote any human being. This usage is because the @ resembles an overhead view of a person's head and shoulders.
The @ is also used sometimes (e.g. articles about missing persons, obituaries, brief reports) to denote an alias after a person's proper name, for instance: "John Smith @ Jean Smyth".
The @ may sometimes be used to represent a [[schwa]], as the actual schwa character "ə" may be difficult to produce in many computers. It is used in this capacity in the ASCII [[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]] or [[Kirshenbaum]] [[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]] scheme.
On some online forums without proper [[Threaded discussion]]s, @ is used to denote a reply, for instance: "@Jane" to respond to a comment Jane made earlier.
In online discourse, the @ is used by some [[Anarchism|anarchists]] as a substitute for the traditional [[Anarchist symbolism#Circle-A|circle-A]] .
It is frequently used in [[Leet]] as a substitute for the letter A.
In [[Malagasy language|Malagasy]], @ is an informal abbreviation for the prepositional form ''amin'ny''.
In [[Internet Relay Chat|IRC]], it is often shown before a user's nick to mark the operator of a channel.
== "Commercial at" in other languages==
In most languages other than English, @ was less common before e-mail became widespread in the mid-1990s, although most [[typewriter]]s included the symbol. Consequently, it is often perceived in those languages as denoting "The Internet", computerization, or modernization in general.
* In [[Armenian language|Armenian]] it is "shnik" which means puppy.
* In [[Azerbaijani language|Azeri]] it is at (using the English pronunciation).
* In [[Basque language|Basque]] it is called ''a bildua'' ("rounded a")
* In [[Belarusian language|Belarusian]] it's called "сьлімак" ("helix", "snail")
* In [[Bulgarian language|Bulgarian]] it is called ''кльомба'' ("klyomba", means nothing else) or ''маймунско а'' (''majmunsko a'' "monkey A").
* In [[Catalan language|Catalan]] it is called ''arrova''.
* In [[Chinese language|Chinese]]
** In [[mainland China]] it is ''quan a'' (圈a), meaning "circled a" or ''hua a'' (花a, lacy a).
** In [[Taiwan]] it is ''xiao laoshu'' (小老鼠), meaning "little [[mouse]]", or ''laoshu hao'' (老鼠號, "mouse sign").
** In [[Hong Kong]] it is at (using the English pronunciation).
* In [[Croatian language|Croatian]] it is informally called ''manki'', coming from the local pronunciation of the English word, ''monkey''. The Croatian word for monkey, ''majmun'', is not used to denote the at sign.
* In [[Czech language|Czech]] and [[Slovak language|Slovak]] it is called ''zavináč'' ([[rollmops]]).
* In [[Danish language|Danish]] it is ''snabel-a'' ("(elephant's) trunk-a").
* In [[Dutch language|Dutch]] it is called ''apenstaartje'' ("little [[monkey]]-[[tail]]").
* In [[Esperanto]] it is called ''ĉe-signo'' ("at" - for the e-mail use, with an address pronounced ''zamenhof ĉe esperanto punkto org''), ''po-signo'' ("each" -- refers only to the mathematical use) or ''heliko'' ("snail").
* In [[Faroese language|Faroese]] it is ''kurla'' (sounds "curly"), ''hjá'' ("at"), ''tranta'' and ''snápila'' ("(elephant's) trunk-a").
* In [[Finnish language|Finnish]] it was originally called ''taksamerkki'' ("fee sign") or ''yksikköhinnan merkki'' ("unit price sign"), but these names are long obsolete and now rarely understood. Nowadays, it is officially ''ät-merkki'', according to the national standardization institute SFS; frequently also spelled "at-merkki". Other names include ''kissanhäntä'', ("cat's tail") and ''miukumauku'' ("the miaow sign").
* In [[French language|French]] it is ''arobase'' or ''arrobe'' or ''a commercial'' (though this is most commonly used in French-speaking Canada, and should normally only be used when quoting prices; it should always be called ''arobase'' or, better yet, ''arobas'' when in an e-mail address), and sometimes ''a dans le rond'' (a in the circle). Same origin as [[Spanish language|Spanish]] which could be derived from [[Arabic language|Arabic]], ''ar-roub''. Southern French speakers refer to it as ''le petit escargot'' ("little snail") due to its appearance, or ''le a avec la queue du marsupilami'', in refers to a comic.
* In [[German language|German]] it sometimes used to be referred to as ''Klammeraffe'' (meaning "[[spider monkey]]"). ''Klammeraffe'' refers to the similarity of the @ to the tail of a monkey grabbing a branch. Lately, it is mostly called ''at'' just like in English
* In [[Greek language|Greek]], it is most often referred to as ''papaki'' (παπάκι), meaning "duckling," due to the similarity it bears with comic character designs for ducks.
* In [[Greenlandic language|Greenlandic]] Inuit language - it is called ''aajusaq'' meaning "a-like" or "something that looks like a"
* In [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]] it is colloquially known as ''[[strudel|shtrudel]]'' (שטרודל). The normative term, invented by the [[Academy of the Hebrew Language]], is ''krukhit'' (כרוכית), which is a Hebrew word for strudel.
* In [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]] it is officially called ''kukac'' ("worm, mite, or maggot").
* In [[Icelandic language|Icelandic]] it is referred to as "at merkið (the at-sign)" or "hjá" which is a direct translation of at.
* In [[Indonesian language|Indonesian]] it is ''et,a bundar'', meaning "[[circle]] A".
* In [[Italian language|Italian]] it is ''chiocciola'' ("[[snail]]") or ''a commerciale'', sometimes ''at'' (pronounced more often {{IPA|/ɛt/}}, and rarely {{IPA|/at/}}, instead of {{IPA|/æt/}}) or ''ad''.
* In [[Japanese language|Japanese]] it is called ''attomāku'' (アットマーク, "at mark"). The word is a [[wasei-eigo]], which are Japanese vocabulary forged from the English language or [[Gairaigo]] foreign loan words in general. It is sometimes called ''[[naruto (disambiguation)|naruto]]'', because of [[Naruto whirlpool]] or food ([[kamaboko]]).
* In [[Korean language|Korean]] it is called ''golbaeng-i'' (골뱅이; bai top shells), a dialectal form of ''daseulgi'' (다슬기), a small freshwater snail with no tentacles.
* In [[Latvian language|Latvian]] it is pronounced same as in English, but, since in Latvian [æ] is written as "e" not "a" (as in English), it's sometimes written as ''et''.
* In [[Lithuanian language|Lithuanian]] it is ''eta'' (equivalent to English ''at'' but with Lithuanian ending)
* In [[Luxembourgish language|Luxembourgish]] it used to be called ''Afeschwanz'' (monkey-tail), but due to widespread use it is now pronounced 'at' like in English.
*In [[Macedonian language|Macedonian]] it is called ''мајмунче'' (pronun. ''my-moon-cheh'', little monkey)
* In [[Morse Code#Common punctuation|Morse Code]] it is known as a "commat," consisting of the Morse code for the "A" and "C" run together as one character: ('''''·--·-·'''''). This occurred in 2004 .
* In [[Norwegian language|Norwegian]] it is officially called ''krøllalfa'' ("curly [[Alpha (letter)|alpha]]" or "alpha twirl"). (The alternate ''alfakrøll'' is also common. Sometimes ''Snabel a''(trunk a, as in elephant's trunk) is used. )
* In [[Persian language|Persian]] it is ''at'' (using the English pronunciation).
* In [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]], it is called 'arroba'. (Some say that in Portugal it is called 'caracol' (snail) although this is yet to be confirmed). The word arroba is also used for a weight measure in Portuguese. While there are regional variations, one arroba is typically considered as representing approximately 25 [[pound (weight)|pounds]], 11.5 kg, and both the weight and the symbol are called ''arroba''. In Brazil, [[cattle]] are still priced by the arroba — now rounded to 15 [[kilogram|kg]].
* In [[Polish language|Polish]] it is called, both officially and commonly ''małpa'' (monkey); sometimes also ''małpka'' (little monkey) or ''bałwanek'' (little snowman).
* In [[Romanian language|Romanian]] it is ''Coadă de maimuţă'' (monkey-tail) or "a-rond"
* In [[Russian language|Russian]] it is most commonly ''sobaka'' (собака) (dog). <!-- ''shtrudel''' (штрудель) (strudel, pastry) - please cite this before it is reintroduced - it is not mentioned on the Russian page and I have never heard of it-->
* In [[Serbian language|Serbian]] it is called ''лудо А'' (''ludo A'' crazy A) or ''мајмун'' (''majmun'' monkey)
* In [[Slovenian language|Slovenian]] it is called ''afna'' (little monkey)
* In [[Spanish language|Spanish]] speaking countries it denotes a pre-metric unit of weight. While there are regional variations in [[Spain]] and [[Mexico]] it is typically considered to represent approximately 25 [[pound (weight)|pounds]] (11.5 kg), and both the weight and the symbol are called ''arroba''. It has also been used as a unit of volume for wine and oil.
* In [[Swedish language|Swedish]] it is called ''snabel-a'' ("(elephant's) trunk-a"), ''[[:sv:Kanelbulle|kanelbulle]]'' (cinnamon bun) or simply "at" like in the English language.
* In [[Swiss German (linguistics)|Swiss German]] it is commonly called ''Affeschwanz'' ("monkey-tail").
* In [[Tagalog language|Tagalog]] it is commonly called ''utong'' ("nipple").
* In [[Turkish language|Turkish]] it is ''et'' (using the English pronunciation). Also called as ''güzel a'' (beautiful a), ''özel a'' (special a), ''salyangoz'' (snail), ''koç'' (ram), ''kuyruklu a'' (a with tail) and ''çengelli a'' (a with hook).
* In [[Ukrainian language|Ukrainian]] it is commonly called ''et'' ("at"), other names being ''ravlyk'' (равлик) (snail), ''slymachok'' (слимачок) (little slug), ''vukho'' (вухо) (ear) and ''pesyk'' (песик) (little dog).
* In [[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]] it is called ''a còng'' (bent a) in the North and ''a móc'' (hooked a) in the South.
* In [[Welsh language|Welsh]] it is sometimes known as a ''malwen'' or ''malwoden'' (a snail).
==References==
{{reflist}}
==External links==
{{Wiktionarypar2|@|at sign}}
{{commons|At sign}}
* [http://www.ascii64.org ascii64 - the @ book - free download (creative commons) - by patrik sneyd - foreword by luigi colani (11/2006)]
* [http://www.herodios.com/atsign.htm A Natural History of the @ Sign] The many names of the at sign in various languages
* [http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/7/7-968.html Linguist's view]
* [http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/whereat.htm Where it's At: names for a common symbol] Article at [[World Wide Words]]
* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/17/wname117.xml UK Telegraph Article: Chinese parents choose to name their baby "@"]
[[Category:Punctuation]]
[[Category:Typography]]
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