I Heart Design

no. 11

SELECTED BYPAOLA ANTONELLITHE @ SYMBOLREDISCOVERED BYRAY TOMLINSON

The @ symbol has a long and disputed past. Some linguists believe that it dates back to the sixth or seventh century, an adaptation of the Latin preposition ad, meaning “at,” “to,” or “toward.”

The @ ligature would have been formed by scribes in an attempt to lessen the number of pen strokes, exaggerating the upstroke of the letter d and curving it over the a. Others believe that the symbol has a later genesis in sixteenth-century Venetian trade, citing commercial documents where @ was used to mean amphora, a standard-size terra-cotta vessel employed by merchants that had become a unit of measure.

From the eighteenth century onward, @ meant “at the price of,” similar ...