At sign

The at sign or shortly At [ æt ] ( engl. at " at " ), according to the presumed origin and ad signs or short ad (Latin ad " at " ), is the character @. Colloquial names are monkey's tail, monkey ear, monkey swing, monkey and elephant ear. The at sign is an integral part of e -mail addresses, it is there between username and domain. In addition, it is used as a symbol for the Internet, for example on signposts to Internet cafes.

• 3.1 Symbol for the Internet
• 3.2 characters for the word in
• 3.3 Programming Languages ​​and Operating Systems
• 3.4 Company Name
• 3.5 Trademarks
• 3.6 Letter 3.6.1 Koalib
• 3.6.2 Yuchi

• 4.1 keyboard
• 4.2 replacement

History

Origins

The origin of the symbol is unclear, there are several hypotheses. Two of them are located in the Middle Ages: either the emergence of a handwritten merger ( ligature ) the letters a and d of the Latin word ad ( German: on, at, to ) or as a predicate, for example, in a letter from a Roman businessman over shiploads as an abbreviation for the unit amphora.

According to another theory, the @ has developed as a ligature of French à, with the same meaning as today, for example, 2 pieces of 500 grams ( = about 500 grams).

In the Iberian Peninsula @ is handed down from the 1555. Spanish, Portuguese and French merchants and then negotiated with bulls and wine and took a measure of solids and liquids called arroba, about ten kilograms ( 25 Libras ) or 15 liters. The word is Arabic, الربع / ar -rub ʿ means " the quarter ". The unit arroba ( s ) was presented with the @ character. The name of arroba for the @ has since received in Spain, France, Portugal and Brazil.

In the records of the Imperial Supreme Court from the 18th century, the @ was used with the meaning of contra ( "against" ): for example, Maier @ Müller.

19th century

According to current opinion typographers - the @ symbol is a ligature, which already appears as an old cast lead characters of the Monotype typeface library in London mid-19th century. It was an ampersand character, which was then called a commercial. For pricing as 5 apples @ 10 p gives the meaning: five apples at 10 pence ( " 5 apples to 10p "). Since the 1880s, the @ is detected on the English typewriters.

20th century and the present

With the invention of e -mail in 1971 was for a still unused characters in the font American Telegraph (ASCII) sought, which is set between user and computer name and should clearly separate the two names. Here, Ray Tomlinson came across the @ and used it as a symbol for at in e- mail addresses. The appointment at ( = in ) also because the username before the @ a person and the domain after the @ originally mostly the mainframe of the establishment or institution designated in which the person worked in years.

In English, the pronunciation "at" is consistently used (as in I'm at home ), the character is, at sign or commercial AT. today The @ is pronounced in German as a rule as in English.

( Input as A followed without a break by C) · - · - ·: Since the beginning of 2004, the at-sign an official part of the Morse code.

On March 22, 2010 announced the New York Museum of Modern Art ( MoMa ) that the @ sign has been placed in the inventory of the museum.

Typography and appearance

The mark consists of a mostly closed ( " one-story " ) form of the kleinbuchstabigen Latin " a", mostly in straight ( "normal" ) typeface rather inclined similar to a cursive form, accreting with the outlet at the bottom right, the entire a- form counter-clockwise circulating in most cases approximately evenly spaced and close to the connection point free ( in serif fonts mostly in a sharp deceleration) ending arc ( " monkey's tail "). The height and position of a form can the lowercase "a" correspond ( ie, from the baseline to the x - line rich ), more often the a- form but also smaller (and then between the said lines ). The sheet extends in each case with the base line and the x - line, but does not reach below the p-type line or above, the H line.

In italic font, and provided the a- form (as in most cases ) appear in italics already in straight font style, the same glyph can be used as a straight typeface. In some fonts, is here with an unchanged form the a- axis of curvature of the enclosing arch sloping.

Other uses

Icon for the Internet

In the English -speaking world the character was long before the advent of e -mail traffic in use, so there is no particular connection to the Internet by @ there. The symbolic association with the Internet in Germany and other non - English-speaking countries due to the fact that the characters in these countries was known before the Internet boom at most programmers and home computer users, but played no role in the correspondence traditional.

Characters for the word in

The @ character is occasionally at in scientific contexts and in other texts on the shortened spelling of English or German when used. example:

• D = 1000 g / ml @ 4 ° C, 1015 bar, - the density of water at a certain temperature and a certain pressure

Programming languages ​​and operating systems

In older programming languages ​​( for example, some dialects of BASIC or the database system dBASE ) @ was also sometimes used as an operator for position information, the existing only in some dialects of BASIC statement PRINT @ 12:10, "HELLO " is, for example, the word HELLO in the 10th line and dar. from the 12th column of the screen

In some programming languages ​​, such as in the variant of Object Pascal used in the development environment Delphi, the memory address of a variable is determined with @. var p: pointer; d: Double; begin p: = @ d; end; determined, for example, the address of the floating-point d and stores it in the pointer variable p.

In the programming language PHP @ is recorded as error control operator before a function call, to suppress error messages from the called function.

In the OpenVMS operating system, the @ sign to start DCL command procedures will be used.

Company name

Please note the message to right topics!

In Germany, the admissibility of the at-sign and other special characters (such as the ampersand '&' as ) are not part of the German spelling, initially controversial in to be entered in the commercial register company name, but can (as of 2013) today be seen as possible in principle. As late as the year 2000 around this has been regularly rejected, for example, in a decision of the Higher Regional Court of Braunschweig on 27 November 2000 ( ref. 2 W 270/ 00, " met @ abox " ), or in a judgment of the District Court of Munich I of 3 April 2001 (Case No. 17 HTK 24115 /00, "D @ B"). In 2004 let the Berlin Regional Court this however (Case No. 102 T 122/ 03, "T @ S GmbH "). by order of 12 February 2009 ( Case No. 17 HCT 920/ 09, "@ p oHG" ) and the District Court Munich I. In that decision was found to be essential that the " @" pronounceable as the English word "at" is thus enunciate the company name is not in the way. The use of "@ " as a fashionable spelling of the letter "a ", however, is not registrable in the commercial register.

In Austria the @ character since made ​​January 1, 2007 entry into force of the Enterprise Code ( UGB) is in principle capable of, but only allowed if there is no doubt in the debate (depending on usage: "at" or " a" or " spider monkey ").

Trademarks

In Germany the @ is currently protected as a word trade mark for various Nice classes, including food and clothing.

Letter

Koalib

The spoken in southern Sudan Koalib language uses the Latin alphabet with extension to some additional letters, including one the at sign similar letters, which is used in the case of Arabic loan words for transcription of the Ain. An application filed in 2004, the request to include these characters than Latin characters in Unicode, was rejected after concerns were raised, the at sign to a similar letter would facilitate spoofing, thus creating security holes. Another 2012 filed request, just as not to encode the uppercase letters in URLs approved special characters and to refer for the small letters on the existing at-sign, was also rejected because of the language community, instead, the characters Ⓐ / ⓐ (U 24 B6 circled latin capital letter a, U 24 D0 circled latin small letter a) could use.

The is seised with minority languages ​​organization SIL International maintains in this framework, a list of not recorded in Unicode characters, which it assigns code points in the "Private Use Area " of Unicode. Here are the at-sign -like characters as U F247 latin small letter at U F248 latin capital letter at contain. Since February 15, 2013, however, these letters are marked as "deprecated " with the version 6.2a of this list, and here is instead to use the circled letters Ⓐ / ⓐ recommended.

Yuchi

The current Verschriftung the language of today live in Oklahoma Yuchi used the at sign for the sound [ æ ] at as in English since these Verschriftung does not use capital letters ( but Latin capital letter is used as the unique case of specific phonemes ), no uppercase variant the "@ " is used.

Gender-neutral short letters (Spanish)

In Spanish-speaking countries, the at-sign is used creatively at the end of words to achieve a gender-neutral short letters. It is then optional for the letter a ( female), or o ( male). The use occurs in both informal communication ( eg, chat ) as well as in official documents. One example is the Certificado Médico de nacid @ @ viv ( live births certificate) in Bolivia.

Representation in computer systems

In the international character encoding system Unicode character is included in the Basic Latin block as U 0040 commercial AT. This is the same position as in the older ASCII character set.

In Internet documents HTML format it is encoded as follows:

• @ (hexadecimal) and
• @ (Decimal).

Keyboard

On the usual German ( MF2 ) keyboard the @ sign is the third assignment on the Q button and can be entered using the key Alt Gr. On Windows systems, you can also take Alt-Gr both Ctrl and Alt keys use what but not recommended because this key combination can also be disabled on Windows systems. On the Swiss German keyboard it is the third assignment on the 2 key, so Alt-Gr 2.

In German Apple keyboards the characters since Mac OS 9.1 is the third assignment on the L button and can be entered using the dial key ⌥. Before that it was on ⌥ ⇧ 1. On the Swiss Apple keyboards the sign is located as the third assignment on the G key, therefore ⌥ G.

In the Neo keyboard layout it is on Mod 3 Y.

On the British keyboard, the character is above the apostrophe and on the American keyboard above the number 2 Here the sign is achieved by using the Shift key, without the keyboards on these mostly non-existent Alt-Gr.

Furthermore, it is possible on many operating systems, the character to write by typing its ASCII code 64 on the numeric keypad while holding down the Alt key Alt 6.4.

Substitution

If the character can not be displayed because it is missing in the font or character set ( for example, teletext or text phones ), so it may possibly by auxiliary words such as "at" (English ) or to ',' at ', , by ',' per ',' for ' or, as ' replaced. By 1982, an enclosed spaces instead of at @ could also be used on the Internet for e- mail addresses. With replacement of RFC 733 through RFC 822 accounted for this possibility.

However, since virtually all modern computer systems and fonts based on Unicode or the older standard ASCII, the character can easily displayed worldwide, processed, transmitted and archived. A replacement for technical reasons is therefore hardly necessary. Even if the keyboard you are using does not have the character, it can be practically always inserted through a corresponding function of the operating system or the respective text editor.

In recent times, the sign on the Internet is also often by other strings such as " ( a) ", "( at) ", " [ at] " replaced or the above mentioned auxiliary words, make it harder for spambots, a string as E email address to recognize.

Term in other languages

• In Arabic it is today "et" pronounced ( borrowed from English ).
• In the Basque one says "a bildua " (a rolled or a wrapped ).
• In Bulgarian, the spider monkey " кльомба " ( " klyomba ", no meaning ) or "the маймунско а " ( monkey A).
• In Danish and Swedish it is called " snabel -a" ( trunk -A). Due to the similar shape of the at sign is often referred to as kanelbulle in Sweden.
• In Finnish the spider monkey was originally called " taksamerkki " ( fees characters) or " yksikköhinnan merkki " (number of price - characters). Meanwhile, the official and most common term is but " ät - merkki "; commonplace: " kissanhäntä " ( cat's tail ). If you specify e- mail address you say "at" or " Miuku mauku " ( onomatopöisch cat suggestive ).
• In similar in Spanish and Portuguese French (see below): "ar (r ) obas ( s)" or " arrobe ". But "a commercial".
• In Greece it is known as duck ( small duck, large παπάκι, papaki ) refers.
• In modern Hebrew it is colloquially referred to by the German word " strudel " ( in Hebrew Scripture שטרודל ), according to the shape of the pastry. Its official name is " kruhit " ( כרוכית ), the Hebrew word for strudel.
• In Iceland they say " fílseyra " ( elephant ear ) for spider monkeys.
• In Italian they say " chiocciola " ( snail) to do so.
• In Japanese it is called " attomāku " (アット マーク, " at sign "). The word is a Wasei - Eigo, a neologism that uses English words. It is also sometimes called Naruto, because of Naruto whirlpool or food ( kamaboko ).
• In Croatian it is informally called " manki ". The word name is based on the English pronunciation of the term monkey. The Croatian name for a monkey, Majmun is not used.
• In Lithuania, it is called the spider " Eta "
• In Dutch, one speaks of " apenstaartje " ( Affenschwänzchen ).
• The Norwegians call the spider " krøllalfa " ( kringle Alpha ).
• In the Polish language is called the sign according to the standard " handlowe, po ' ", or " atka ". But more often " małpa " (monkey) or " Małpka " ( monkeys ).
• In Portugal, Spain and Latin America, the symbol is ( a quarter hundredweight ) for a weight of 25 pounds. Both this unit of weight and the symbol are called " arroba ", from Arabic. "Ar - Roub " ( the quarter ).
• In Russian they say " sobaka " ( собака ) (dog) or dim. " Sobačka " ( собачка ) ( Puppy ).
• In Serbian, the term " ludo -A" is widespread ( Crazy A), but also " Majmun " (monkey), " majmunsko A" ( äffisches A) and " majmunski rep" ( monkey tail) are common terms.
• In the Czech and Slovak people say " zavinac " ( pickled herring ).
• In Hungary it is " kukac " ( worm), sometimes also " bájgli " (~ Swirl) called.