Rowena Jayne
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Style guide

The at sign | How to use the commercial at in copywriting

the at sign
 

When to use the at sign in copy

There are very few reasons, if but one, to use this symbol. Some financial institutions use it to indicate “at a rate of”. You may also see it used as shorthand for “at” to intro a location, say on a gig poster or sports event. For style, I recommend only using it for email addresses and aliases, such as with Slack or Twitter; as symbols go, it’s rather inelegant and somewhat of a typeface nightmare.

  • Never use it to replace “at” in any form of copy, long or short

  • Only use it for email addresses and aliases

But, where did it even come from?

Who knows? No, really—anyone? It’s actually kind of a mystery, which isn’t really surprising given it barely has a name. Sure, you may know it mostly as the at sign, but it’s also the at symbol, commercial at, and address sign. The ugliest name of all is strudel, which is as unwieldy as the look of it.

Email is certainly to thank for its now widespread use (starting in the ‘70s) but it was in use much earlier than that. All the way back to 1345, if you can believe that, but not remotely similar to how it’s used today—it was used for the initial a in amen in the Bulgarian of the Manasses Chronicle. We don’t know why.

It has some more clear origins in Catalan, Spanish, and Portuguese as shorthand for arroba, which is a unity of weight. The earliest example of this dates 4th May, 1536. Oh, and of course, some numpty tried to trademark the sign—which they did in 2012, but it was revoked in 2017. And that’s all I’ve got.

 
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The at sign | How to use the commercial at in copywriting
The at sign | How to use the commercial at in copywriting

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Rowena Harris