At sign, arrobas … or just @

The @ functions as the separator in an email address. It is of course pronounced “at”, as in me [at] work [dot] org. OK, so you knew that much. However, the origins of this odd character and its other name, “arrobas”, remain a mystery. Some say that it was a unit of measurement in Spanish and Portuguese. The word Aroba also means a cinnamon stick in Swedish and a monkey’s tail in Dutch. As for the symbol @, one view is that it originated not in English but in Latin. To address someone formally, the correct form of words was “ad”, (meaning to or at), with the wraparound D coming to represent the A. You choose. But now ”@” has another use as well, for Twitter addicts replying to a Tweet (a message from another Twitter member), and bloggers replying to comments left on their blog.