h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Why do you say we English speakers have failed to come up with a decent name for @?

Is "at" not the best possible name? It is short, pronounceable and means what it says. It makes the addresses readable:

[email protected] is joe at buzz.com.

I think this would be confusing if it were:

joe monkey's tail buzz.com

The symbols actual name is ampersand not at. As mentioned in another thread, a new word, atpersand, could do the job. Invariably it would be shortened to at in day-to-day usage - which would suit our purposes well.

Ampersand is the name for a different symbol. Ampersand is "&". The "@" sign, as described in the article, is "commercial at" but is normally known as "at".

Oops. Forgive me, I had been drinking

I can't see the problem with Joe's monkey tail. If he didn't want a monkey tail, he shouldn't have a computer

Hello

I found this a very interesting article, and wanted to add a little point about "ampersand".

Chambers gives some details about 'ampersand' that were new to me, and the person who suggested 'atpersand' as a name (or rather, pronouncable name!) for the at symbol might agree with my new effort.

ampersand - the character representing 'and' - Also 'amperzand' , ampussyand, ampassy [ and per se and - that is '& by itself and'.

A bit confusing, I admit, but knowing that 'per se' means 'in itself', as in : "I'm not talking about one individual dog but dogs per se!" , it makes some kind of sense.

And by the same logic, I propose 'atpersat' as a suitable word that would mean 'the at symbol'.

Just as a footnote, I live and work in France on a french keyboard, and for some reason they have @ as the THIRD option on the 0 key. This means that every time you want to type an e-mail adress, you have to press 'Ctr + alt + 0' !! Not terribly convenient, especially if you 'ten-finger type'.

Hello

I found this a very interesting article, and wanted to add a little point about "ampersand".

Chambers gives some details about 'ampersand' that were new to me, and the person who suggested 'atpersand' as a name (or rather, pronouncable name!) for the at symbol might agree with my new effort.

ampersand - the character representing 'and' - Also 'amperzand' , ampussyand, ampassy [ and per se and - that is '& by itself and'.

A bit confusing, I admit, but knowing that 'per se' means 'in itself', as in : "I'm not talking about one individual dog but dogs per se!" , it makes some kind of sense.

And by the same logic, I propose 'atpersat' as a suitable word that would mean 'the at symbol'.

Just as a footnote, I live and work in France on a french keyboard, and for some reason they have @ as the THIRD option on the 0 key. This means that every time you want to type an e-mail adress, you have to press 'Ctr + alt + 0' !! Not terribly convenient, especially if you 'ten-finger type'.

Decent name in French: "petit escargot", or so I'm told.