At sign

The at-sign, @, normally read aloud as "at", also commonly called the at symbol or commercial at, and less commonly a wide range of other terms (such as the strudel), is originally an accounting and commercial invoice abbreviation meaning "at a rate of" (e.g. 7 widgets @ £2 = £14). It was not included on the keyboard of the earliest commercially successful typewriters, but was on at least one 1889 model and the very successful Underwood models from the "Underwood No. 5" in 1900 onward. It is now universally included on computer keyboards. The mark is encoded at U+0040 @ COMMERCIAL AT (HTML @).

The fact that there is no single word in English for the symbol has prompted some writers to use the French arobase or Spanish and Portuguese arroba—or to coin new words such as asperand,ampersat, —but none of these have achieved wide usage.

History

Origin theories

There are several theories about the origin of the commercial at character.

Percent sign

The percent sign (%) is the symbol used to indicate a percentage, a number or ratio as a fraction of 100. Related signs include the permille (per thousand) sign ‰ and the permyriad (per ten thousand) sign ‱ (also known as a basis point), which indicate that a number is divided by one thousand or ten thousand respectively. Higher proportions use parts-per notation.

Correct style

Spacing

English style guides prescribe writing the number and percent sign without any space between. However, the International System of Units and ISO 31-0 standard prescribe a space between the number and percent sign, in line with the general practice of using a non-breaking space between a numerical value and its corresponding unit of measurement.

Other languages have other rules for spacing in front of the percent sign:

Ampersand

The ampersand is the logogram "&", representing the conjunction word "and". It originated as a ligature of the letters et, Latin for "and".

Etymology

The word ampersand is a corruption of the phrase "and per se & (and)", meaning "and intrinsically the word and (represented by the symbol &)".

Traditionally, when reciting the alphabet in English-speaking schools, any letter that could also be used as a word in itself ("A", "I", and, at one point, "O") was repeated with the Latin expression per se ("by itself"). This habit was useful in spelling where a word or syllable was repeated after spelling; e.g. "d, o, g—dog" would be clear but simply saying "a—a" would be confusing without the clarifying "per se" added. It was also common practice to add the "&" sign at the end of the alphabet as if it were the 27th letter, pronounced as the Latin et or later in English as and. As a result, the recitation of the alphabet would end in "X, Y, Z, and per se and". This last phrase was routinely slurred to "ampersand" and the term had entered common English usage by 1837. However, in contrast to the 26 letters, the ampersand does not represent a speech sound—although other characters that were dropped from the English alphabet did, such as the Old English thorn, wynn, and eth.

Sign (album)

Sign is the seventh album by Clock DVA, released on August 3, 1993 through Contempo Records.

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Robert Baker and Adi Newton. 

Personnel

References

External links