El at symbol, which is how the @ symbol; it is increasingly present in our lives thanks to the irruption of the internet. Its use has evolved in such a way that it is now used in social networks to mention a specific user.
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The origin of the symbol at
It is believed that the origin of the symbol arroba, the "@«; comes from a letter from an Italian merchant from the 1448th century discovered in the Mediterranean area. In the letter, the symbol is used as a way of referring to each of the amphorae that carried products to Rome. Another possible origin is in the Taula de Ariza from XNUMX, in an entry of wheat into the Kingdom of Aragon from Castile.
Its use as a symbol of a unit of weight spread in Italy, Spain and France, which made even old typewriters adopt this symbol in their first models. In Anglo-Saxon countries, its use was adopted to save space in the preposition "at«, and as a substitute for «at the rate of» to refer to payers or debtors in accounting documents.
How to put the at symbol with the keyboard
To put the @ symbol On a normal keyboard, we have to hold down the “Alt Gr” button, located to the right of the space bar, and press the “2” button located above the “Q” and “W” keys. This is because with the secondary character button, by pressing the “2” key, we can put the at symbol keyboard.
On an iOS, Android, or console interface keyboard, the at symbol is usually in the special symbols section of the operating system keyboard. this position will depend on the system or even the keyboard application that we use.
Use of at in science and mathematics
When writing test results, you need to add the conditions under which the data was collected to see if different conditions yield different results. An example can be the density of a liquid at a certain temperature, that is why the @ symbol is placed in front of the condition in which it has been checked, in this case, in front of the temperature measurement.
The symbol is used here because of its history of use, replacing the preposition "at" in English. Using a single character instead of two can save time and space when doing many checks on a regular basis.
Using the at symbol in emails
As its use to replace "at» In the English language, the @ symbol was widely used as a symbol to mention dedicated spaces on a website. This is why it is used in email addresses, and to explain it in a simple way, we have the following example:
In the wrong direction «juan@fernandez.com«, the email service client will send the email to the address «fernandez.com«, and the web mail server will send the message to «Juan" in "fernandez.com«. Thus, a message has arrived to Juan, from the Fernandez.com website.
Its use has evolved so that in social networks such as Twitter and Instagram, the same terminology is used to refer to users of said social networks. For example, if in either of these two social networks you send a message with @Hardwaresfera, you will be sending a message addressed to us.
Why is the at symbol used in emails?
The reason that symbol is used is quite simple: not used in common names from anywhere in the world, which serves to define a separation between username and domain name. Periods can be used as first and last name separators in the absence of an empty space character. It is also used because it has been used to refer to something in one place, in this case, a user within an email service.
Other places where the at symbol is used
The use of this symbol in computing, It is not reserved only for emails, since it is used in computer languages, with different uses in each one. In ALGOL 68, it is a shortened form of the keyword «at«, whose function is to change the lower bound of an array. For the ActionScript language, it is used in XML parsing as a text string prefix to identify attributes in contrast to child elements.
In C#, the symbol denotes "string literals" in which no escape characters have been used and where two double quotes in a row represent a double quote. As a prefix, it also allows keywords to be used as identifiers.9
It has also been used to indicate the position on the screen to write in some BASIC dialects. In Lotus 1-2-3, the at sign was the prefix for math functions. For the DOS system and in the Windows command console, the instructions prefixed with an at are not displayed on the screen). For bash, the @ character it is treated as a wild card that expands in a special way.
Is the use of the at symbol correct in Spanish inclusive language?
A secondary use that has been given to the @ symbol is that the at in inclusive language from Spanish in written texts. But it is not valid in spoken language as it is unpronounceable. The idea of using it in inclusive language is based on the fact that the symbol has both the form of a feminine "a" and a masculine "o". When using it, includes both the male and female gender in words in which the gender is implicit in their name.
For example, the word “contento” is masculine while “contenta” is feminine. In the case of wanting to use inclusive language in a written text, the at symbol to refer to both genders and we get the word "Happy", to refer to both "happy" in the masculine and "contenta" in the feminine.
This use is simply reduced to when it is written since it is impossible to use it in spoken language. It also has its criticisms. One of them is that for people who use text-to-speech technology, words that have strange symbols are not recognized and therefore difficult to read.
What does the RAE say about the "@" in inclusive language?
It must be taken into account that the at sign is not a linguistic sign and, therefore, its use in these cases is inadmissible from the normative point of view; Added to this is the impossibility of applying this integrative formula in many cases without giving rise to serious inconsistencies.
Royal Spanish Academy
The Royal Spanish Academy understands the use of the at sign to eliminate redundant words in circulars and posters, but it is not recommended for use in a formal setting. It should be said that the word of the RAE is not definitive and can be used if it is convenient or if its use makes reading or writing more comfortable, provided there is no possibility of doubt.
It is common to see in circulars for internal use in schools using "the students» or in companies using «l@s trabajadores/es», although there are certain words that do not lend themselves to this use because the masculine does not use the «o", but the "e". It should be said that while the idea of using the at symbol as a form of inclusive language was widespread for two decades, recently there are groups that prefer to use the "e» to include both main genders and other people on the gender spectrum such as non-binary people.
Why is "arroba" sometimes written as "algarroba"?
This conversion of the word "arroba" to "algarroba" as if it were a Brugeura comic is a way of trying to avoid spam by bots. The idea is that bots massively investigate forum topics to find emails to send spam to. By putting "algarroba" as "arroba", the aim is to confuse massive bots that look for the symbol "@" or "arroba" to add emails to their spam lists.
How do you say in english?
The symbol "@" in English is pronounced "at", as a way of saying"en«. An example would be «joe@mail.com» would be «joe at mail dot com«.
Why was the at sign created?
The @ was created several centuries ago in trade records several centuries ago. The use of @ in the computer field was created by Ray Tomlison in 1971, by putting the symbol between the user and the destination address when sending a message between two computers. He used the at symbol because it was one that already existed and was very little used in computing., so as not to confuse programs for computer scientists.
