The @-symbol, part 2 of 2

Before its ascent to accidental stardom, the ‘@’ went almost unremarked for centuries. Widely used to mean ‘at the rate of’1 — for example, ‘3 apples @ $1’ is equivalent to ‘3 apples at $1 each’ — the symbol lived out a useful but mundane existence in the world of commerce, rarely warranting a second glance from paleographers or philologists. Even now, when it has been propelled firmly into the limelight by email’s meteoric rise, credible accounts of the symbol’s visual appearance and meaning remain surprisingly thin on the ground. Read more →

The @-symbol: intermission

This is a quick note to thank the many readers who have commented on the first @-symbol article. There have been some great comments, both adding extra information about the at sign and pointing out errors I made in compiling the article. If you haven’t done so already, feel free to take a look and join the discussion.

Also, the article has had some incredible mentions on Twitter — thanks go to Martha Lane Fox, Alyssa Milano, Terrence Dorsey of codeproject.com, Luke Scheybeler of Rapha (as a cyclist, this came as a particularly nice surprise!) and Erik Spiekermann of Edenspiekemann. Amazing, really. Thanks again!

The second @-symbol article will be published next weekend, so check back on Sunday 7th August.

The @-symbol, part 1 of 2

Like the ampersand, the ‘@’ symbol is not strictly a mark of punctuation; rather, it is a logogram or grammalogue, a shorthand for the word ‘at’. Even so, it is as much a staple of modern communication as the semicolon or exclamation mark, punctuating email addresses and announcing Twitter usernames. Unlike the ampersand, though, whose journey to the top took two millennia of steady perseverance, the at symbol’s current fame is quite accidental. It can, in fact, be traced to the single stroke of a key made almost exactly four decades ago. Read more →