 Drama: January 26, 2022 Issue [#11178] |
This week: Punctuation Edited by: Lilith 🎄 Christmas Cheer  
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| Hi there! I am popping in with what may become a series about words, phrases, and punctuation. Let me know how you like it and if you'd like to read more! |
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@
The @ symbol is not just a mark of punctuation; rather, it is a shorthand notation for the word "at". It has become as much a staple of modern communication as the semicolon and exclamation mark. It is quite necessary for punctuating email addresses and tagging people and places on a variety of social platforms.
The earliest discovered use of the @ symbol is found in a Bulgarian translation of a Greek chronicle written by Constantinos Manasses in 1345. Held today in the Vatican Apostolic Library, it features the @ symbol in place of the capital letter alpha "Α" as an initial in the word Amen, however, the reason behind it being used remains unknown.
The symbol later took on a historic role in commerce. Merchants have long used it to signify “at the rate of”— as in “12 widgets @ $1.” (That the total is $12, not $1, speaks to the symbol’s pivotal importance.) Still, the machine age was not so kind to @. The first typewriters, built in the mid-1800s, didn’t include @ symbol. Likewise, @ was not among the symbolic array of the earliest punch-card tabulating systems (first used in collecting and processing the 1890 U.S. census), which were precursors to computer programming.
Did you know the 'at' symbol's current fame was quite accidental and happened a little over forty years ago! In 1971, Ray Tomlinson was a computer engineer working for a consulting firm, Bolt. That company had been contracted by the U.S. government's Advanced Research Projects Agency to come up with a way to connect all over the country.
The ability to contact other computers already existed, but Ray Tomlinson is the person who found a way to contact a specific person at another computer. He perused his keyboard, looking for a symbol that didn't get much usage, and chose @. Doing so, creating the first email address: tomlinson@bbn-tenexa; This idea of the symbol representing located at in the form user@host.
Another intriguing thing about this sign (@) is that it doesn’t have a proper name. We refer to it as 'at', called the “snail” by Italians and the “monkey tail” by the Dutch. Whatever it's called, we can't go a day without using it!
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