Some scholars believe the @ symbol dates back to the sixth century, when scribes simplified the Latin word ad (at) by exaggerating the upstroke of the letter d and curving it over the a. Others believe that the symbol had its genesis in sixteenth-century Venetian trade as an abbreviation for amphora, a standard-size terra-cotta vessel employed by merchants that became a unit of measure.
Since the nineteenth century, @ has appeared on standard typewriter and computer keyboards as the "commercial a," used, until fairly recently, almost exclusively by accountants to mean "at the rate of."
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