The funny littleawith its tail circle back around it is probably one of the most commonly used symbols today . So it is truly amazing to learn that there is no official , universal name for it . The most accepted terminal figure , even in many other languages , is to call it theat sign . But there are XII of different words used to describe it . A lot of languages use words that associate the form of the symbol with some type of animal .
Here are a few illustration of the many exotic terms associated with the @ symbolisation :
Before it became the stock symbol for e - ring mail , the @ symbolization was typically used to indicate the cost or free weight of something . For example , if you bought five oranges for $ 1.25 each , you might compose it as 5 oranges @ $ 1.25 ea . It is still used in this manner on a miscellanea of forms and bill around the world .
The actual origin of the symbol is unsettled . It was used by Thelonious Monk induce copies of books before the innovation of the printing press . Since every intelligence had to be fastidiously transcribed by hand for each copy of a al-Qur’an , the Monk that perform the copying duty look for ways to repress the number of case-by-case slash per word for common words . So , the wordatbecame a single stroke of the pen as@instead of three strokes . While it does n’t seem like much today , it made a huge difference to the men who spend their lives copying holograph !
Another extraction tale state that the @ symbol was used as an abbreviation for the wordamphora , which was the unit of measurement used to regulate the amount held by the large terra cotta jars that were used to ship grain , spices and wine . Giorgio Stabile , an Italian scholarly person , discovered this utilisation of the @ symbol in a letter written in 1536 by a Florentine trader named Francesco Lapi . It seems likely that some up-and-coming trader saw the @ symbol in a book transcribed by monks using the symbol and appropriated it for employment as the amphora abbreviation . This would also excuse why it became common to use the symbol in sexual congress to quantity of something .
