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UUltraTextGen

Symbol Reference

At Symbol (@)

Once a commercial shorthand, now the anchor of every email address and handle.

By The UltraTextGen Editorial TeamEditorial standards

Short answer

Once a merchant's shorthand for “at the rate of”, the @ was chosen in 1971 to separate a username from a host name precisely because it appeared in nobody's name.

At Symbol (@) — title card for the symbol reference article on UltraTextGen.

Where you'll actually meet it

Beyond email, the at sign prefixes usernames on nearly every social platform, marks decorators in Python, introduces at-rules in CSS, and identifies annotations in Java. Its use as a mention marker is a convention that spread outward from early Twitter rather than anything specified in a standard, which is why platforms still disagree on whether a mention is case-sensitive and whether it must be preceded by a space to register.

Look-alike variants

A fullwidth ＠ (U+FF20) exists for CJK typesetting. The small form ﹫ (U+FE6B) comes from a compatibility block added for round-tripping older East Asian encodings and should not be used in new text.

Origin

Merchants used @ to mean 'at the rate of' — five crates @ ten pounds. It was a quiet corner of the keyboard until 1971, when it was chosen to separate a user name from a host name because it appeared in no one's name.

A grid of 3 at symbol (@) shown as individual copyable characters.

How to type it

Shift + 2 on a US layout; Alt Gr + Q on many European layouts.

Questions

Why was @ chosen for email addresses?
Ray Tomlinson picked it in 1971 precisely because it appeared in nobody's name, so it could separate a user from a host with no risk of ambiguity. It was also already on the keyboard and largely unused, which made it free to repurpose.
Can an email address contain more than one @?
Not in the addressable part. The last @ separates the local part from the domain, and while the specification permits an @ inside a quoted local part, virtually no mail system handles it reliably, so treat one @ as the practical limit.

How to type it

Code pointU+0040
HTML entity@
WindowsShift + 2 on a US layout, Alt Gr + Q on many European layouts
macOSShift + 2, or Alt + L on some localised layouts
LinuxCtrl + Shift + U, then 0040, then Enter or Space

Read next

Ampersand (&)The ampersand is a ligature of the Latin word et, meaning “and”.Bullet Point (•)The dot that opens a list item.

Sources

More in Symbol Reference

Ampersand (&)Asterisk (*)Degree Symbol (°)Infinity Symbol (∞)Copyright Symbol (©)Bullet Point (•)Arrow Symbol (→)Check Mark (✓)Peace Symbol (☮)