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.
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.