”@”這個符號是怎來?

The typographic character @, the at sign, denotes a pan-lingual abbreviation of the word 'at'. It began use as the shorthand for the phrase "at the rate of" in accounting and commercial invoices, e.g. “7 widgets @ $2 ea. = $14”. Nowadays, this commercial character is ubiquitous because of its use in e-mail addresses. In English, it is informally pronounced as at, and can be referred to as the at sign, the asperand or the at symbol. Its official, typographic character nomenclature is commercial at in the ANSI/CCITT/Unicode character encoding standards. Some historical names are mentioned in the "History" section below.

History

From Norman French "à" meaning "at" in the "each" sense, i.e. "2 widgets à £5.50 = £11.00" is the accountancy shorthand notation in English commercial vouchers and ledgers to the 1990s, when the e-mail usage superseded the accountancy usage. It also is so used in Modern French and Swedish; in this view, the at-symbol is a stylised form of à that avoids raising the writing hand from the page in drawing the symbol; this compromise between @ and à in French handwriting is in street market signs.

The @ was present in the 1902 model Lambert typewriter made by Lambert Typewriter Company of New York. Its inclusion in the original 1963 ASCII character set went unremarked as it was a standard commercial typewriter character, e.g. the 1961 IBM Selectric typewriter's keyboard included the @ (at-symbol).

Modern uses

In contemporary English usage, @ is a commercial symbol, meaning at and at the rate of. It has been used, rarely, in financial documents or grocers' price tags, and is not used in standard typography.

2008-07-14 14:23:00 補充：
「」符號，根據其外形，中國有人稱「圈a」或「花a」，在台灣普遍使用「小老鼠」一詞，而英文中則是A-Tail“帶尾巴的a”，縮寫就是「AT」，常用來表示“在”，所以E-mail中使用他來分隔用戶名和郵件服務器的域名。

2008-07-14 14:23:29 補充：
@

The typographic character @, the at sign, denotes a pan-lingual abbreviation of the word 'at'. It began use as the shorthand for the phrase "at the rate of" in accounting and commercial invoices, e.g. “7 widgets @ $2 ea. = $14”. Nowadays, this commercial character is ubiquitous because of its use in e-mail addresses. In English, it is informally pronounced as at, and can be referred to as the at sign, the asperand or the at symbol. Its official, typographic character nomenclature is commercial at in the ANSI/CCITT/Unicode character encoding standards. Some historical names are mentioned in the "History" section below.

History

From Norman French "à" meaning "at" in the "each" sense, i.e. "2 widgets à £5.50 = £11.00" is the accountancy shorthand notation in English commercial vouchers and ledgers to the 1990s, when the e-mail usage superseded the accountancy usage. It also is so used in Modern French and Swedish; in this view, the at-symbol is a stylised form of à that avoids raising the writing hand from the page in drawing the symbol; this compromise between @ and à in French handwriting is in street market signs.

The @ was present in the 1902 model Lambert typewriter made by Lambert Typewriter Company of New York. Its inclusion in the original 1963 ASCII character set went unremarked as it was a standard commercial typewriter character, e.g. the 1961 IBM Selectric typewriter's keyboard included the @ (at-symbol).

Modern uses

In contemporary English usage, @ is a commercial symbol, meaning at and at the rate of. It has been used, rarely, in financial documents or grocers' price tags, and is not used in standard typography.