Wednesday, May 7, 2008

#$&@)(*@&Q(# @@@!

I despise the fact that @ does not mean "about." It should for so many reasons.

1. "About" is a fuller, rounder word that "at," visually and conceptually. It goes better with the curvilinear @.

2. (well, they each have ZERO HITS on Googlefight.)

3. I always think it does.


"At" doesn't need such an exciting symbol. There are plenty of things that make more sense. What about a little arrow pointing to the right? I contend that no other keyboard symbol represents "about" as well as @.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, I too have always hated that @ represents "at". My complaint is that "at" is just two letters, so why do we need a symbol for it? We are only saving one keystroke (maybe .5 keystrokes since you need to use that CAPS key to make the @).

I have always wanted @ to mean "around" and my instinct tells me it does. It's an "a" with a circle AROUND it. What were they thinking?

Dusty said...

The worst is not that @ means "at" but that @ has no name other than "at sign". Whereas every other punctuation or symbol has a name. Ampersand. Asterisk. Tilde. Even the # is called, like, an octoplotz or something.

More global energy should be spent naming @ so we can just say "hit the aywhoosh" or whatever.

Hit the gnwkberx.

Lore & Ipsum said...

E, We are of one mind. But since we do need the caps key, isn't it also two keystrokes? I guess we need a symbol of some sort to make it clear that it's not part of the text in email messages. But again, the little arrow that could!

Dusty, yes! I do like aywhoosh. Did you see that article in the New Yorker about the chef from "Alinea", the name for the sign copyeditors make to signify "new paragraph" (which ties in well to his culinary theory)? (unexpressable emotion)

Lore & Ipsum said...

Also, I knew some of these from technoland (Leeann, you too, probably):

A solid vertical bar "|" is a PIPE
The number sign "#" is a HASH
Forward slash "/" is a WHACK
Exclamation point "!" is a BANG