page_title: At sign
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: At sign / History
caption_attribution_description: Svenska: Klipp från Arboga rådhusrätt och magistrats gemensamma protokoll A 1:6 1670-1674 sidan 997. Texten visar hur man använde snabel-a i betydelsen à. Volymen förvaras hos Landsarkivet i Uppsala. English: Evidence of the usage of @ to signify French "à" (meaning "at") from a 1674 protocol from a Swedish lower court and magistrate (Arboga rådhusrätt och magistrat)
context_page_description: The at sign, @, is normally read aloud as "at"; it is also commonly called the at symbol or commercial at. It is used as an accounting and invoice abbreviation meaning "at a rate of", but it is now seen more widely in email addresses and social media platform handles.
  The absence of a single English word for the symbol has prompted some writers to use the French arobase or Spanish and Portuguese arroba, or to coin new words such as ampersat, asperand, and strudel, but none of these has achieved wide use. The term alphasand is sometimes used, especially in East Asia.
  Although not included on the keyboard of the earliest commercially successful typewriters, it was on at least one 1889 model and the very successful Underwood models from the "Underwood No. 5" in 1900 onward. It started to be used in email addresses in the 1970s, and is now universally included on computer keyboards.
context_section_description: The earliest yet discovered symbol in this shape is found in a Bulgarian translation of a Greek chronicle written by Constantinos Manasses in 1345. Held today in the Vatican Apostolic Library, it features the @ symbol in place of the capital letter alpha "Α" in the word Amen. Why it was used in this context is still a mystery. The evolution of the symbol as used today is not recorded.
  Whatever the origin of the @ symbol, the history of its usage is more well-known: it has long been used in Spanish and Portuguese as an abbreviation of arroba, a unit of weight equivalent to 25 pounds, and derived from the Arabic expression of "the quarter" (الربع pronounced ar-rubʿ). An Italian academic, Giorgio Stabile, claims to have traced the @ symbol to the 16th century, in a mercantile document sent by Florentine Francesco Lapi from Seville to Rome on May 4, 1536. The document is about commerce with Pizarro, in particular the price of an @ of wine in Peru. Currently, the word arroba means both the at-symbol and a unit of weight. In Venetian, the symbol was interpreted to mean amphora (anfora), a unit of weight and volume based upon the capacity of the standard amphora jar since the 6th century.
  Until now the first historical document containing a symbol resembling a @ as a commercial one is the Spanish "Taula de Ariza", a registry to denote a wheat shipment from Castile to Aragon in 1448; even though the oldest fully developed modern @ sign is the one found on the above-mentioned Florentine letter.
caption: @ used to signify French "à" ("at") from a 1674 protocol from a Swedish court (Arboga rådhusrätt och magistrat)
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