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Typographical symbols

ContentsOverview 1

Typography 1

General typography 11Ampersand 11Asterisk 15At sign 20Backslash 26Bullet 28Caret 30Copyright symbol 32Dagger 34Ditto mark 37Greater-than sign 38Less-than sign 39Inverted question and exclamation marks 41Number sign 44Numero sign 48Obelus 51Ordinal indicator 53Per mil sign 56Percent sign 58Pilcrow 61Prime 63Registered trademark symbol 66Section sign 68Service mark symbol 70Sound recording copyright symbol 71Star 72Tilde 77Trademark symbol 84Underscore 85Vertical bar 87

Currency 90

Currency sign 90List of currency symbols 92

Enclosed alphanumerics 99Enclosed alphanumerics 99Enclosed A 104Enclosed C 105Enclosed R 106

Punctuation 107Apostrophe 107Brackets 123Colon 130Comma 134Dash 139Double hyphen 146Ellipsis 148Exclamation mark 153Full stop 158Guillemets 161Hyphen 164Hyphen-minus 169Interpunct 170Question mark 174Quotation mark 178Quotation mark glyphs 184Semicolon 187slash 190solidus 195Space 200

Uncommon typography 205Asterism 205Because and therefore signs 207Index 209Interrobang 211Irony punctuation 214Lozenge 216

Slashed zero 218Tee 221Tie 222Up tack 224Weierstrass p 224

Miscellany 225Japanese postal mark 225Japanese typographic symbols 227Non-English usage of quotation marks 232

ReferencesArticle Sources and Contributors 240Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors 250

Article LicensesLicense 253

1Overview

Typography

Specimen of Trajan typeface, based on the letterforms ofcapitalis monumentalis or Roman square capitals, as used for

the inscription at the base of Trajan's Column from whichthe typeface takes its name

Typography (from the Greek words (typos) = formand (graphe) = writing) is the art and technique ofarranging type in order to make language visible. Thearrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, pointsize, line length, leading (line spacing), adjusting the spacesbetween groups of letters (tracking) and adjusting the spacebetween pairs of letters (kerning). Type design is a closelyrelated craft, which some consider distinct and others a part oftypography; most typographers do not design typefaces, andsome type designers do not consider themselvestypographers.[1][2] In modern times, typography has been putinto motionin film, television and online broadcaststoadd emotion to mass communication.[3]

Typography is performed by typesetters, compositors,typographers, graphic designers, art directors, comic bookartists, graffiti artists, clerical workers, and anyone else whoarranges type for a product. Until the Digital Age, typographywas a specialized occupation. Digitization opened uptypography to new generations of visual designers and layusers, and David Jury states that "typography is nowsomething everybody does."[4]

History

Printing press, 16th century in Germany

Typography traces its origins to the first punches and dies used tomake seals and currency in ancient times. The typographical principle,the creation of a complete text by reusing identical characters, was firstrealized in the Phaistos Disc, an enigmatic Minoan print item fromCrete, Greece, which dates between 1850 and 1600 BC.[][5][6] It hasbeen put forward that Roman lead pipe inscriptions were created bymovable type printing,[7] but this view has been recently dismissed bythe German typographer Herbert Brekle.[8]

The essential criterion of type identity was met by medieval printartifacts such as the Latin Pruefening Abbey inscription of 1119 thatwas created by the same technique as the Phaistos disc.[9] The silver altarpiece of patriarch Pellegrinus II(11951204) in the cathedral of Cividale was printed with individual letter punches.[10][11] The same printingtechnique can apparently be found in 10th to 12th century Byzantine reliquaries.[12] Individual letter tiles where thewords are formed by assembling single letter tiles in the desired order were reasonably widespread in medievalNorthern Europe.[13]

Typography 2

Modern movable type, along with the mechanical printing press, was invented in mid-15th century Germany by thegoldsmith Johannes Gutenberg.[14] His type pieces from a lead-based alloy suited printing purposes so well that thealloy is still used today.[15] Gutenberg developed specialized techniques for casting and combining cheap copies ofletterpunches in the vast quantities required to print multiple copies of texts. This technical breakthrough wasinstrumental in starting the Printing Revolution and printing the world's first book (with movable type) theGutenberg Bible.Typography with movable type was separately invented in 11th-century China. Metal type was first invented inKorea during the Goryeo Dynasty around 1230. Both hand printing systems, however, were only sporadically usedand discontinued after the introduction of Western lead type and the printing press.[16]

ScopeIn contemporary use, the practice and study of typography is very broad, covering all aspects of letter design andapplication. These include: typesetting and type design handwriting and calligraphy graffiti inscriptional and architectural lettering poster design and other large scale lettering such as signage and billboards business communications and promotional collateral advertising wordmarks and typographic logos (logotypes) apparel (clothing) labels on maps vehicle instrument panels kinetic typography in motion picture films and television as a component of industrial designtype on household appliances, pens and wristwatches, for example as a component in modern poetry (see, for example, the poetry of E. E. Cummings)Since digitization, typography has spread to a wider ranger of applications, appearing on web pages, LCD mobilephone screens, and hand-held video games. The ubiquity of type has led typographers to coin the phrase "Type iseverywhere".Traditional typography follows four principles: repetition, contrast, proximity, and alignment.

Typography 3

Text typography

A specimen of roman typefaces by WilliamCaslon

In traditional typography, text is composed to create a readable,coherent, and visually satisfying whole that works invisibly, withoutthe awareness of the reader. Even distribution of typeset material, witha minimum of distractions and anomalies, is aimed at producing clarityand transparency.

Choice of typeface(s) is the primary aspect of text typographyprosefiction, non-fiction, editorial, educational, religious, scientific, spiritualand commercial writing all have differing characteristics andrequirements of appropriate typefaces and fonts. For historic materialestablished text typefaces are frequently chosen according to a schemeof historical genre acquired by a long process of accretion, withconsiderable overlap between historical periods.

Contemporary books are more likely to be set with state-of-the-artseriffed "text romans" or "book romans" with design values echoingpresent-day design arts, which are closely based on traditional modelssuch as those of Nicolas Jenson, Francesco Griffo (a punchcutter whocreated the model for Aldine typefaces), and Claude Garamond. With

their more specialized requirements, newspapers and magazines rely on compact, tightly fitted seriffed text fontsspecially designed for the task, which offer maximum flexibility, readability and efficient use of page space. Sansserif text fonts are often used for introductory paragraphs, incidental text and whole short articles. A current fashionis to pair sans-serif type for headings with a high-performance seriffed font of matching style for the text of anarticle.

Typography is modulated by orthography and linguistics, word structures, word frequencies, morphology, phoneticconstructs and linguistic syntax. Typography is also subject to specific cultural conventions. For example, in Frenchit is customary to insert a non-breaking space before a colon (:) or semicolon (;) in a sentence, while in English it isnot.

ColorIn typography, color is the overall density of the ink on the page, determined mainly by the typeface, but also by theword spacing, leading and depth of the margins.[17] Text layout, tone or color of the set text, and the interplay of textwith the white space of the page in combination with other graphic elements impart a "feel" or "resonance" to thesubject matter. With printed media typographers are also concerned with binding margins, paper selection andprinting methods when determining the correct color of the page.

Readability and legibilityLegibility is primarily the concern of the typeface designer, to ensure that each individual character or glyph isunambiguous and distinguishable from all other characters in the font. Legibility is also in part the concern of thetypographer to select a typeface with appropriate clarity of design for the intended use at the intended size. Anexample of a well-known design, Brush Script, contains a number of illegible letters since many of the characterscan be easily misread especially if seen out of textual context.Readability is primarily the concern of the typographer or information designer. It is the intended result of the complete process of presentation of textual material in order to communicate meaning as unambiguously as possible. A reader should be assisted in navigating around the information with ease, by optimal inter-letter, inter-word and

Typography 4

particularly inter-line spacing, coupled with appropriate line length and position on the page, careful editorialchunking and choice of the text architecture of titles, folios, and reference links.

Text typeset in Iowan Old Style roman, italicsand small caps, optimized at approximately

10words per line, typeface sized at 14points on1.4x leading, with 0.2 points extra tracking.

Extract of an essay by Oscar Wilde The EnglishRenaissance of Art c.1882.

The two concepts are distinguished by Walter Tracy in Letters ofCredit: these two aspects of a type are

fundamental to its effectiveness. Because the commonmeaning of legible is readable there are those evensome professionally involved in typography who thinkthat the term legibility is all that is needed in anydiscussion on the effectiveness of types. But legibility andreadability are separate, though connected aspects oftype. Properly understood the two terms can help todescribe the character and function of type more preciselythan legibility alone. In typography we need to drawthe definition of legibility to mean the quality ofbeing decipherable and recognisable so that we can say,for example, that the lowercase h in a particular old styleitalic is not legible in small sizes because its in-turned legmakes it look like the letterb; or a figure3 in a classifiedadvertisement is too similar to the 8. In display sizes,legibility ceases to be a serious matter; a character thatcauses uncertainty at 8point size is plain enough at24point.[18]

Note that the above applies to people with 20/20vision at appropriate reading distance and under optimal lighting.The analogy of an opticians chart, testing for visual acuity and independent of meaning, is useful to indicate thescope of the concept of legibility.

In typography if the columns of a newspaper or magazine or the pages of a book can be read for many minutes ata time without strain or difficulty, then we can say the type has good readability. The term describes the quality ofvisual comfort an important requirement in the comprehension of long stretches of text but, paradoxically, not soimportant in such things as telephone directories or air-line time-tables, where the reader is not reading continuouslybut searching for a single item of information. The difference in the two aspects of visual effectiveness is illustratedby the familiar argument on the suitability of sans-serif types for text setting. The characters in a particular sans-serifface may be perfectly legible in themselves, but no one would think of setting a popular novel in it because itsreadability is low.[19]

Legibility refers to perception and readability refers to comprehension.[19] Typographers aim to achieve excellencein both."The typeface chosen should be legible. That is, it should be read without effort. Sometimes legibility is simply amatter of type size. More often however, it is a matter of typeface design. In general typefaces that are true to thebasic letterforms are more legible than typefaces that have been condensed, expanded, embellished, or abstracted."However, even a legible typeface can become unreadable through poor setting and placement, just as a less legibletypeface can be made more readable through good design."[20]

Studies of both legibility and readability have examined a wide range of factors including type size and type design.For example, comparing serif vs. sans-serif type, roman type vs. oblique type and italic type, line length, linespacing, color contrast, the design of right-hand edge (for example, justification, straight right hand edge) vs. rangedleft, and whether text is hyphenated.

Typography 5

Legibility research has been published since the late nineteenth century. Although there are often commonalities andagreement on many topics, others often create poignant areas of conflict and variation of opinion. For example, noone has provided a conclusive answer as to which font, serifed or sans serif, provides the most legibility according toAlex Poole.[21]

Other topics such as justified vs unjustified type, use of hyphens, and proper fonts for people with reading difficultiessuch as dyslexia, have continued to be subjects of debate. Websites such as hgredbes.com [22], ban comic sans [23],UK National Literacy Trust [24], and Mark Simsonson Studio [25] have raised debating opinions on the abovesubjects and many more each presenting a thorough and well-organized position.Legibility is usually measured through speed of reading, with comprehension scores used to check for effectiveness(that is, not a rushed or careless read). For example, Miles Tinker, who published numerous studies from the 1930sto the 1960s, used a speed of reading test that required participants to spot incongruous words as an effectivenessfilter.The Readability of Print Unit at the Royal College of Art under Professor Herbert Spencer with Brian Coe and LindaReynolds[22] did important work in this area and was one of the centres that revealed the importance of the saccadicrhythm of eye movement for readabilityin particular, the ability to take in (i.e., recognise the meaning of groupsof) around three words at once and the physiognomy of the eye, which means the eye tires if the line required morethan 3 or 4 of these saccadic jumps. More than this is found to introduce strain and errors in reading (e.g. Doubling).These days, legibility research tends to be limited to critical issues, or the testing of specific design solutions (forexample, when new typefaces are developed). Examples of critical issues include typefaces (also called fonts) forpeople with visual impairment, and typefaces for highway signs, or for other conditions where legibility may make akey difference.Much of the legibility research literature is somewhat atheoreticalvarious factors were tested individually or incombination (inevitably so, as the different factors are interdependent), but many tests were carried out in theabsence of a model of reading or visual perception. Some typographers believe that the overall word shape (Bouma)is very important in readability, and that the theory of parallel letterwise recognition is either wrong, less important,or not the entire picture.Studies distinguishing between Bouma recognition and parallel letterwise recognition with regard to how peopleactually recognize words when they read, have favored parallel letterwise recognition, which is widely accepted bycognitive psychologists.[citation needed]

Some commonly agreed findings of legibility research include:[citation needed]

Text set in lower case is more legible than text set all in upper case (capitals), presumably because lower caseletter structures and word shapes are more distinctive.

Extenders (ascenders, descenders and other projecting parts) increase salience (prominence). Regular upright type (roman type) is found to be more legible than italic type. Contrast, without dazzling brightness, has also been found to be important, with black on yellow/cream being

most effective. Positive images (e.g. black on white) are easier to read than negative or reversed (e.g. white on black). However

even this commonly accepted practice has some exceptions, for example in some cases of disability. (See UKNational Literacy Trust [24] for their findings in this area.)

The upper portions of letters play a stronger part than the lower portions in the recognition process.

Typography 6

Text typeset using LaTeX digital typesettingsoftware

Readability can also be compromised by letter-spacing, word spacing,or leading that is too tight or too loose. It can be improved whengenerous vertical space separates lines of text, making it easier for theeye to distinguish one line from the next, or previous line. Poorlydesigned fonts and those that are too tightly or loosely fitted can alsoresult in poor legibility.

Typography is an element of all printed material. Periodicalpublications, especially newspapers and magazines, use typographicalelements to achieve an attractive, distinctive appearance, to aid readersin navigating the publication, and in some cases for dramatic effect. Byformulating a style guide, a periodical standardizes on a relativelysmall collection of typefaces, each used for specific elements within

the publication, and makes consistent use of type sizes, italic, boldface, large and small capital letters, colors, andother typographic features. Some publications, such as The Guardian and The Economist, go so far as to commissiona type designer to create bespoke (custom tailored) typefaces for their exclusive use.

Different periodical publications design their publications, including their typography, to achieve a particular tone orstyle. For example, USA Today uses a bold, colorful, and comparatively modern style through their use of a varietyof typefaces and colors; type sizes vary widely, and the newspaper's name is placed on a colored background. Incontrast, The New York Times uses a more traditional approach, with fewer colors, less typeface variation, and morecolumns.Especially on the front page of newspapers and on magazine covers, headlines are often set in larger displaytypefaces to attract attention, and are placed near the masthead.

Experimental typographyExperimental typography is defined as the unconventional and more artistic approach to setting type. Francis Picabiawas a Dada pioneer in the early 20th Century. David Carson is often associated with this movement, particularly forhis work in Ray Gun magazine in the 1990s. His work caused an uproar in the design community due to hisabandonment of standards in typesetting practices, layout, and design. Experimental typography places emphasis oncommunicating emotion, rather than on legibility.

Typography 7

Display typography

19th century wanted poster for John WilkesBooth (the assassin of U.S. President Abraham

Lincoln) printed with lead and woodcut type, andincorporating photography.

Display typography is a potent element in graphic design, where thereis less concern for readability and more potential for using type in anartistic manner. Type is combined with negative space, graphicelements and pictures, forming relationships and dialog between wordsand images.

Color and size of type elements are much more prevalent than in texttypography. Most display typography exploits type at larger sizes,where the details of letter design are magnified. Color is used for itsemotional effect in conveying the tone and nature of subject matter.Display typography encompasses: posters; book covers; typographic logos and wordmarks; billboards; packaging and labeling; on-product typography; calligraphy; graffiti; inscriptional and architectural lettering; poster design and other large scale lettering signage; business communications and promotional collateral; advertising; wordmarks and typographic logos (logotypes), and kinetic typography in motion pictures and television; vending

machine displays; online and computer screen displays.

Advertising

Typography has long been a vital part of promotional material andadvertising. Designers often use typography to set a theme and moodin an advertisement; for example using bold, large text to convey a particular message to the reader. Type is oftenused to draw attention to a particular advertisement, combined with efficient use of color, shapes and images. Today,typography in advertising often reflects a company's brand. Fonts used in advertisements convey different messagesto the reader, classical fonts are for a strong personality, while more modern fonts are for a cleaner, neutral look.Bold fonts are used for making statements and attracting attention.

Inscriptional and architectural lettering

A print advertisement for the EncyclopdiaBritannica from a 1913 issue of National

Geographic

The history of inscriptional lettering is intimately tied to the history ofwriting, the evolution of letterforms and the craft of the hand. Thewidespread use of the computer and various etching and sandblastingtechniques today has made the hand carved monument a rarity, and thenumber of letter-carvers left in the USA continues to dwindle.

For monumental lettering to be effective it must be consideredcarefully in its context. Proportions of letters need to be altered as theirsize and distance from the viewer increases. An expert letterer gainsunderstanding of these nuances through much practice and observationof their craft. Letters drawn by hand and for a specific project have the

possibility of being richly specific and profoundly beautiful in the hand of a master. Each can also take up to an hourto carve,[citation needed] so it is no wonder that the automated sandblasting process has become the industry standard.

Typography 8

To create a sandblasted letter, a rubber mat is laser cut from a computer file and glued to the stone. The sand thenbites a coarse groove or channel into the exposed surface. Unfortunately, many of the computer applications thatcreate these files and interface with the laser cutter do not have many typefaces available, and often have inferiorversions of typefaces that are available.[citation needed] What can now be done in minutes, however, lacks the strikingarchitecture and geometry of the chisel-cut letter that allows light to play across its distinct interior planes.[citationneeded]

Notes[1] Pipes, Alan. Production For Graphic Designers 2nd Edition, Page 40: Prentice Hall Inc 1997[2] John Berry, Being a Typographer (http:/ / www. creativepro. com/ article/ dot-font-being-a-typographer)[3] Vas Blagodarskiy, Kinetic Typography and Mass Communications (http:/ / kinetictypography. com/

kinetic-typography-and-mass-communications/ )[7][7] Lanciani 1881, p. 416, ;[9][9] ; ; ;[10][10] ;[11] Brekle, Herbert E. (2011): Die typographische Herstellungstechnik der Inschriften auf dem silbernen Altaraufsatz im Dom von Cividale

(http:/ / epub. uni-regensburg. de/ 20788/ 6/Die_typographische_Herstellungstechnik_der_Inschriften_auf_dem_silbernen_Altaraufsatz_im_Dom_von_Cividale. pdf), Regensburg

[12][12] ;[13][13] ;[14][14] ; ; ;[15] Encyclopdia Britannica 2006: "Printing", retrieved November 27, 2006[16][16] Ch'on Hye-bong 1993, p. 19[18] Tracy 1986. 3031[19][19] Tracy 1986.31[20] Craig, J. and Scala, IK. Designing with Type, the Essential Guide to Typography. 5th ed. p.63. Watson Guptil. 2006.[21] Alexpoole.info (http:/ / www. alexpoole. info/ academic/ literaturereview. html)[22][22] Legibility of Type, Linda Reynolds 1988 Baseline 10

References ASTM International D7298 Standard Test Method of Comparative Legibility by Means of Polarizing Filter

Instrumentation Brekle, Herbert E. (1997), "Das typographische Prinzip. Versuch einer Begriffsklrung" (http:/ / www.

typeforum. de/ news_332. htm), Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 72: 5863 Brekle, Herbert E. (2005), Die Prfeninger Weihinschrift von 1119. Eine palographisch-typographische

Untersuchung (brief summary) (http:/ / www. typeforum. de/ news_308. htm), Regensburg: Scriptorium Verlagfr Kultur und Wissenschaft, ISBN3-937527-06-0

Brekle, Herbert E. (2010), "Herstellungstechniken von Inschriften auf rmischen Wasserleitungsrohren aus Blei",in Hanneforth, Thomas; Fanselow, Gisbert, Language and Logos. Studies in Theoretical and ComputationalLinguistics, studia grammatica, 72, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, pp.419437, ISBN978-3-05-004931-1

Ch'on Hye-bong: "Typography in Korea", Koreana, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1993), pp.1019 Bringhurst, Robert (2002). The Elements of Typographic Style (version 2.5). Vancouver: Hartley & Marks. ISBN

0-88179-133-4. Often referred to simply as "Bringhurst", Elements is widely respected as the current authority ontypographic style for Latin typography. ( excerpts (http:/ / www. aaronsw. com/ 2002/ typographicStyle)).Well-paired with Tschichold's The Form of the Book, below, from the same publisher.

Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. (1980), The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Cambridge University Press,ISBN0-521-29955-1

Febvre, Lucien; Martin, Henri-Jean (1997), The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 14501800, London:Verso, ISBN1-85984-108-2

Typography 9

Heller, Steven and Meggs, Philip B. Texts on Type: Critical Writings on Typography (c) 2001, Allworth Press,Allworth Communications, New York. ISBN 1-58115-082-2. A compilation of over fifty texts on the history,practice, and aesthetics of type design and typography.

Hodge, A. Trevor (1992), Roman Aqueducts & Water Supply, London: Duckworth, ISBN0-7156-2194-7 Hupp, Otto (1906), "Die Prfeninger Weiheinschrift von 1119", Studien aus Kunst und Geschichte, Festschrift fr

Friedrich Schneider, Freiburg i. Br.: Herder Koch, Walter (1994), Literaturbericht zur mittelalterlichen und neuzeitlichen Epigraphik (19851991),

Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Hilfsmittel, 14, Mnchen, p.213, ISBN978-3-88612-114-4 Lanciani, R.: "Topografia di Roma antica. I commentarii di Frontino intorno le acque e gli acquedotti. Silloge

epigrafica aquaria", in: Memorie della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, Serie III, Volume IV, Classe di ScienzeMorali, Rom 1881 (Reprint: Quasar publishing house, 1975), pp.215616

Lehmann-Haupt, Hellmut (1940), "Englische Holzstempelalphabete des XIII. Jahrhunderts",Gutenberg-Jahrbuch: 9397

Lipinsky, Angelo (1986), "La pala argentea del Patriarca Pellegrino nella Collegiata di Cividale e le sue iscrizionicon caratteri mobili", Ateneo Veneto 24: 7580

Man, John (2002), The Gutenberg Revolution: The Story of a Genius and an Invention that Changed the World,London: Headline Review, ISBN978-0-7472-4504-9

McLuhan, Marshall (1962), The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1st ed.), University ofToronto Press, ISBN978-0-8020-6041-9

Pace, Pietrantonio (1986), Gli acquedotti di Roma e il Aquaeductu di Frontino (2nd ed.), Rome: Art Studio S.Eligio

Tracy, Walter Letters of Credit 1986 Gordon Fraser Tschichold, Jan (1991). The Form of the Book: Essays on the Morality of Good Design. Vancouver: Hartley &

Marks. ISBN 978-0-88179-034-4. A comprehensive collection of essays on the typographic art. A more classiccompanion to Bringhust, above.

Lexique des rgles typographiques en usage l'Imprimerie nationale, French: Imprimerie nationale, 2002, ISBN2-7433-0482-0, for French typography.

Swanson, Gunnar Graphic Design and Reading: explorations of an uneasy relationship (c) 2000, Allworth Press,Allworth Communications, New York. ISBN 1-58115-063-6. The Crystal Goblet, or Printing Should Be InvisibleBeatrice Warde; Improving the Tool Hrant H. Papazian.

Alexander Lawson, Anatomy of a Typeface, first published in 1990, devotes entire chapters to the developmentand uses of individual or small groupings of typefaces. ISBN 978-0-87923-333-4

White, Alex W. (1999). Type in Use Effective typography for electronic publishing (version 2.0). W.W. Norton& Company, Inc. New York. ISBN 0-393-73034-4 (pbk).

Martnez de Sousa, Jos, Manual de estilo de la lengua espaola, 3. ed., Gijn: Trea, 2007. For Spanishtypography.

, Ortografa y ortotipografa del espaol actual, 2. ed., Gijn: Trea, 2008. For Spanish typography. Mestres, Josep M.; Costa, Joan; Oliva, Mireia; Fit, Ricard. Manual d'estil. La redacci i l'edici de textos. 4a ed.,

rev. i ampl. Vic / Barcelona: Eumo / UB / UPF / Rosa Sensat, 2009. For Catalan typography. Pujol, J. M., i Sol, Joan: Ortotipografia. Manual de l'author, l'autoeditor i el dissenyador grfic, 2a ed., rev.

Barcelona: Columna, 2000. For Catalan typography. Gill, Eric (2000) [1931], An Essay on Typography, David R Godine, pp.188, ISBN0-87923-950-6

Typography 10

External links AIGA typography articles (http:/ / www. aiga. org/ content. cfm/ search?topicAlias=typography) Articles and

interviews relating to typography from AIGA's Voice section. Decode Unicode (http:/ / www. decodeunicode. org/ ) A wiki with all 98,884 Unicode characters, including full

text search capability. Type-Culture Academic Resource (http:/ / www. typeculture. com/ academic_resource/ ) Educational resources,

including documentary videos about typography. Typedesk (http:/ / www. typedesk. com) An online journal of typography and graphic communication. Typostrate (http:/ / www. typostrate. com) A daily inspiration blog about type and what you can do with it. Symbols - Comprehensive list of typographical symbols

11

General typography

Ampersand

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& Ampersand Punctuationapostrophe ( ' ) brackets ( [], (), {}, ) Colon (punctuation)colon ( : ) comma ( , ) dash ( , , , ) ellipsis ( , ..., . . . ) exclamation mark ( ! ) Full stopfull stop/period ( . ) guillemets ( ) hyphen ( ) hyphen-minus ( - ) question mark ( ? ) quotation marks ( , , '', "" ) semicolon ( ; ) Slash (punctuation)slash/stroke/solidus ( /, ) Word dividers interpunct ( ) Space (punctuation)space () ( ) ( ) General typographyampersand ( & ) asterisk ( * ) at sign ( @ ) backslash ( \ ) Bullet (typography)bullet ( ) caret ( ^ ) Dagger (typography)dagger ( , ) Degree symboldegree ( ) ditto mark ( ) Inverted question and exclamation marksinverted exclamation mark ( ) Inverted question and exclamation marksinverted question mark ( ) number signnumbersign/pound/hash ( # ) numero sign ( ) obelus ( ) ordinal indicator ( , ) Percent signpercent, per mil ( %, ) basis point ( ) pilcrow ( ) Prime (symbol)prime ( , , ) section sign ( ) tilde ( ~ ) Underscoreunderscore/understrike ( _ ) Vertical barverticalbar/brokenbar/pipe ( , | ) Intellectual propertycopyright symbol ( ) registered trademark symbolregistered trademark ( ) Service mark symbolservice mark ( ) sound recording copyright symbolsound recording copyright ( ) Trademark symboltrademark ( ) Currency Currency (typography)currency (generic) ( ) Currency signcurrency (specific) ( Argentine austral Thai baht Ghana cedi Cent (currency) Costa Rican coln Brazilian cruzeiro European Currency Unit Dollar sign$ Vietnamese dong Bangladeshi_taka Greek drachma Euro sign Florin sign French franc Paraguayan guaran Hryvnia sign Lao kip Turkish lira sign German gold mark Mill (currency) Nigerian naira Spanish peseta Philippine peso sign Pfennig Pound sign Indian rupee sign Rupee sign Shekel sign Kazakhstani tenge Mongolian tgrg Won sign Cambodian riel ) Uncommon typographyAsterism (typography)asterism ( ) Index (typography)index/fist ( ) interrobang ( ) irony punctuation ( ) lozenge ( ) reference mark ( ) Tie (typography)tie ( ) Related diacriticdiacritical marksList of logic symbolslogic symbolswhitespace characters Non-English usage of quotation marksnon-English quotation style ( , ) In other scripts Chinese punctuationHebrew punctuationJapanese punctuationKorean punctuation Wikipedia book Book Category Category Portal Portal An ampersand (or epershand; "&") is a logogram representing the grammatical conjunctionconjunction word "and". This symbol is a Typographic ligatureligature of the letters et, Latin for "and". "The Ampersand & More" with Kory Stamper, part of the "Ask the Editor" video series at Merriam-Webster.comEtymology The word ampersand is a corruption of the phrase "and (&) List of Latin phrases (P)#per seper se and", meaning "and (the symbol &) intrinsically (is the word) and". cited in Traditionally, in English-speaking schools when reciting the alphabet, any letter that could also be used as a word in itself ("A", "I", and, at one point, "O") was preceded by the Latin expression per se ("by itself").WP:NOTRS Also, it was common practice to add at the end of the alphabet the "&" sign as if it were the 27th letter, pronounced and. As a result, the recitation of the alphabet would end in "X, Y, Z and per se and". This last phrase was routinely slurred to "ampersand" and the term crept into common English usage by around 1837.WP:NOTRS However, in contrast to the other 26, the ampersand does not represent a speech sound, although other letters that were dropped from the English alphabet, such as the Old English thorn

Ampersand 12

(letter)thorn, did.Through popular etymology, it has been falsely claimed that Andr-Marie Ampre used the symbol in his widely read publications, and that people began calling the new shape "Ampre's and".For examples of this misunderstanding, see Jessie Bedford, Elizabeth Godfrey: English Children in the Olden Time, page 22. Methuen & co, 1907, p. 22; Harry Alfred Long: Personal and Family Names, page 98. Hamilton, Adams & co, 1883.History Evolution of the ampersandThe modern ampersand is virtually identical to that of the Carolingian minuscule. The italic ampersand, to the right, is originally a later et-ligature.Et ligature in Insular scriptSome modern fonts, like Trebuchet MS or Myriad (typeface)#Myriad WebMyriad Web Pro, employ ampersand characters that are revealing of its originThe ampersand can be traced back to the 1st century A.D. and the Old Roman cursive, in which the letters E and T occasionally were written together to form a Typographic ligatureligature (figure 1). In the later and more flowing New Roman Cursive, ligatures of all kinds were extremely common; figures 2 and 3 from the middle of 4th century are both examples of how the et-ligature could look in this script. However, during the following development of the Latin script that led up to the Carolingian minuscule (9th century), while the use of ligatures in general diminished, the et-ligature continued to be used and gradually became more stylized and less revealing of its origin (figures 46).Jan Tschichold: "Formenwandlung der et-Zeichen."The modern italic type ampersand is a kind of et-ligature that goes back to the cursive scripts developed during the Renaissance. After the advent of printing in Europe in 1455, printers made extensive use of both the italic and Roman ampersands. Since the ampersand's roots go back to Roman times, many languages that use a variation of the Latin alphabet make use of it. The ampersand often appeared as a letter at the end of the Latin alphabet, as for example in ByrhtferthByrhtfer's list of letters from 1011. Similarly, & was regarded as the 27th letter of the English alphabet, as used by children (in the USA). An example may be seen in M. B. Moore's 1863 book The Dixie Primer, for the Little Folks. In her 1859 novel Adam Bede, George Eliot refers to this when she makes Jacob Storey say: "He thought it [Z] had only been put to finish off th' alphabet like; though ampusand would ha' done as well, for what he could see."George Eliot: Adam Bede. Chapter XXI. Online at Project Gutenberg.The ampersand should not be confused with the Tironian notesTironian "et" (), which is a symbol similar to the numeral 7. Both symbols have their roots in the classical antiquity, and both signs were used up through the Middle Ages as a representation for the Latin word "et" ("and"). However, while the ampersand was in origin a common ligature in the everyday script, the Tironian "et" was part of a highly specialised stenographic shorthand.Writing the ampersandIn everyday handwriting, the ampersand is sometimes simplified as an or a 3 superimposed by a vertical line. The ampersand is also often shown as an or a 3 with a vertical line above and below it or a dot above and below it.The + sign is often used in place of an ampersand, sometimes with an added loop (resembling [voiceless alveolar lateral fricative]).Usage In film credits for stories, screenplays, etc., & indicates a closer collaboration than and. The ampersand is used by the Writers Guild of America to denote when two writers collaborated on a specific script, rather than having rewritten another writer's work. In screenplays, two authors joined with & collaborated on the script, while two authors joined with and worked on the script at different times and may not have consulted each other at all. In the latter case, they both contributed enough significant material to the screenplay to receive credit but did not work together (more than likely one was hired to rewrite the previous writer's script).In APA style, the ampersand is used when citing sources in text such as (Jones & Jones, 2005). In the list of references, an ampersand precedes the last author's name when there is more than one author. (This does not apply to The MLA Style ManualMLA style, which calls for the "and" to be spelled.) The phrase et cetera ("and so forth"), usually written as etc. can be abbreviated &c. representing the combination et + c(etera).The ampersand can be used to indicate that the "and" in a listed item is a part of the item's name and not a separator (e.g. "Rock, pop, rhythm & blues, and hip hop"). Computing Encoding and displayThe character (computing)character is Unicode U+0026 & ampersand (HTML: & &), this is inherited from the same value in ASCII. Apart from this, Unicode also has the variants: U+FE60 small ampersand (HTML: ) U+FF06 fullwidth ampersand (HTML: in block Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms) U+214B inverted ampersand (HTML: ) On the QWERTY keyboard layout it is Shift+7. It is almost always available on any keyboard layout, sometimes on Shift+6 or Shift+8. On the AZERTY keyboard layout it is just &. In URLs, the ampersand must be replaced by %26 when representing a string character to avoid interpretation as a

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Ampersand#Web standardsURL syntax character. Programming languagesIn the 20th century, following the development of formal logic, the ampersand became a commonly used logical notation for the binary operator or sentential connective logical conjunctionAND. This usage was adopted in computing.Many languages with syntax derived from C (programming language)C, including C++, Perl, and more differentiate between: & for Bitwise operationbitwise AND. (4 & 2) is zero, (4 & 5) is 4. && for minimal evaluationshort-circuit logical conjunctionlogical AND. (4 && 2) is true. In C (programming language)C, C++, and Go (programming language)Go, a prefix "&" is a unary operator denoting the memory addressaddress in memory of the argument, e.g. &x, &func, &a[3].In C++ and PHP, unary prefix & before a Parameter (computer science)formal parameter of a Function (programming)function denotes reference (C++)pass-by-reference. In Fortran, the ampersand forces the compiler to treat two lines as one. This is accomplished by placing an ampersand at the end of the first line and at the beginning of the second line. In Common Lisp, the ampersand is the prefix for lambda list keywords.Ampersand is the string concatenation operator in many BASIC programming languageBASIC dialects, AppleScript, Lingo (programming language)Lingo, HyperTalk, and FileMaker. In Ada (programming language)Ada it applies to all one-dimensional arrays, not just strings. BASIC-PLUS on the Digital Equipment CorporationDEC PDP-11 uses the ampersand as a short form of the verb PRINT. Applesoft BASIC used the ampersand as an internal command, not intended to be used for general programming, that invoked a machine language program in the computer's Read-only memoryROM. In some versions of BASIC, unary suffix & denotes a variable is of type long, or 32 bits in length.The ampersand is occasionally used as a prefix to denote a hexadecimal number, such as &FF for decimal 255, for instance in BBC BASIC. Some other languages, such as the Machine code monitorMonitor built into ROM on the Commodore 128, used it to indicate octal instead, a convention that spread throughout the Commodore community and is now used in the VICE emulator. In MySQL the '&' has dual roles. As well as a logical AND, it additionally serves as the bitwise operator of an intersection between elements. The ampersand character is used as a special character in at least some versions of the database software originally created in Denmark under the name Navision (the software has since been acquired by Microsoft). Using this character in either "Text" or "Code" fields could create difficulties for performing certain tasks in Navision, such as filtering records (either by the user or by programming). It is also used as described below to indicate shortcuts in menu items and labels. Perl uses the ampersand as a Sigil (computer programming)sigil to refer to subroutines: In Perl 4 and earlier, it was effectively required to call user-defined subroutines In Perl 5, it can still be used to modify the way user-defined subroutines are called In Perl 6, the ampersand Sigil (computer programming)sigil is only used when referring to a subroutine as an object, never when calling itText markup In SGML, XML, and HTML, the ampersand is used to introduce an SGML entity. The HTML and XML encoding for the ampersand character is the entity "&" (pronounced Special Characters"amper-amp"). This creates what is known as the ampersand problem. For instance, when putting URLs or other material containing ampersands into XML format files such as RSS (file format)RSS files the amp; has to be added to the & or they are considered not well formed and computers will be unable to read the files correctly. SGML derived the use from IBM Generalized Markup Language, which was one of many IBM-mainframe languages to use the ampersand to signal a text substitution, eventually going back to System/360 macro assembly language.In the plain TeX markup language, the ampersand is used to mark tabstops. The ampersand itself can be applied in TeX with \&. The Computer Modern fonts replace it with an "E.T." symbol in the cmti#(text italic) fonts, so it can be entered as {\it\&} in running text when using the default (Computer Modern) fonts.In Microsoft Windows menus, labels and other captions, the ampersand is used to denote the keyboard shortcut for that option (Alt keyAlt + that letter, which appears underlined). A double ampersand is needed in order to display a real ampersand. This convention originated in the first WIN32 api, and is used in Windows Forms, How to: Create Access Keys for Windows Forms Controls, from msdn.microsoft.com and is also copied into many other tookits on multiple operating systems. Unix shells Some Unix shells use the ampersand as a metacharacter: Some Unix shells, like the POSIX standard sh shell, use the ampersand to Job control (Unix)execute a process in the background and to duplicate file descriptors. In Bash (Unix shell)Bash, the ampersand can separate words, control the command history, duplicate file descriptors, perform logical operations, control jobs, and participate in Regular expressions.Web

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standards The generic Uniform Resource LocatorURL (Uniform Resource Locator) syntax allows for a query stringto be appended to a file name in a web address so that additional information can be passed to a script; the questionmark, or query mark, ?, is used to indicate the start of a query string. A query string is usually made up of a numberof different namevalue pairs, each separated by the ampersand symbol, &. For example,www.example.com/login.php?username=test&password=blank. But see also "Ampersands in URI attribute values".References External links The Hot Word at Dictionary.com: How ampersand came from a misunderstanding

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Asterisk

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* Asterisk Punctuationapostrophe ( ' ) brackets ( [], (), {}, ) Colon (punctuation)colon ( : ) comma ( , ) dash ( , , , ) ellipsis ( , ..., . . . ) exclamation mark ( ! ) Full stopfull stop/period ( . ) guillemets ( ) hyphen ( ) hyphen-minus ( - ) question mark ( ? ) quotation marks ( , , '', "" ) semicolon ( ; ) Slash (punctuation)slash/stroke/solidus ( /, ) Word dividers interpunct ( ) Space (punctuation)space () ( ) ( ) General typographyampersand ( & ) asterisk ( * ) at sign ( @ ) backslash ( \ ) Bullet (typography)bullet ( ) caret ( ^ ) Dagger (typography)dagger ( , ) Degree symboldegree ( ) ditto mark ( ) Inverted question and exclamation marksinverted exclamation mark ( ) Inverted question and exclamation marksinverted question mark ( ) number signnumbersign/pound/hash ( # ) numero sign ( ) obelus ( ) ordinal indicator ( , ) Percent signpercent, per mil ( %, ) basis point ( ) pilcrow ( ) Prime (symbol)prime ( , , ) section sign ( ) tilde ( ~ ) Underscoreunderscore/understrike ( _ ) Vertical barverticalbar/brokenbar/pipe ( , | ) Intellectual propertycopyright symbol ( ) registered trademark symbolregistered trademark ( ) Service mark symbolservice mark ( ) sound recording copyright symbolsound recording copyright ( ) Trademark symboltrademark ( ) Currency Currency (typography)currency (generic) ( ) Currency signcurrency (specific) ( Argentine austral Thai baht Ghana cedi Cent (currency) Costa Rican coln Brazilian cruzeiro European Currency Unit Dollar sign$ Vietnamese dong Bangladeshi_taka Greek drachma Euro sign Florin sign French franc Paraguayan guaran Hryvnia sign Lao kip Turkish lira sign German gold mark Mill (currency) Nigerian naira Spanish peseta Philippine peso sign Pfennig Pound sign Indian rupee sign Rupee sign Shekel sign Kazakhstani tenge Mongolian tgrg Won sign Cambodian riel ) Uncommon typographyAsterism (typography)asterism ( ) Index (typography)index/fist ( ) interrobang ( ) irony punctuation ( ) lozenge ( ) reference mark ( ) Tie (typography)tie ( ) Related diacriticdiacritical marksList of logic symbolslogic symbolswhitespace characters Non-English usage of quotation marksnon-English quotation style ( , ) In other scripts Chinese punctuationHebrew punctuationJapanese punctuationKorean punctuation Wikipedia book Book Category Category Portal PortalAsterisks used to illustrate a section break in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.An asterisk (*; Late LatinLate Latin languageLatin: asteriscus, from Greek languageGreek: , asteriskos, "little star") , Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus is a typographical symbol or glyph. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often pronounce it as star (as, for example, in the A* search algorithm or C*-algebra), or, more informally, splat. In English, an asterisk is usually five-pointed in sans-serif typefaces, six-pointed in serif typefaces[citation needed], and six- or eight-pointed when handwritten. It can be used to censor swear words and vulgar or objectionable text.The asterisk is derived from the need of the printers of family trees in feudal times for a symbol to indicate date of birth. The original shape was seven-armed,[citation needed] each arm like a teardrop shooting from the center. In computer science, the asterisk is commonly used as a wildcard character, or to denote pointer (computer programming)pointers, repetition, or multiplication. UsageTypography The asterisk is used to call out a footnote, especially when there is only one on the page. Less commonly, multiple asterisks are used to denote different footnotes on a page (i.e., *, **, ***). Typically, an asterisk is positioned after a word or phrase and preceding its accompanying footnote. Three spaced asterisks centered on a page may represent a jump to a different scene or thought. A group of three asterisks arranged in a triangular formation is called an asterism (typography)asterism.

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One or more asterisks may be used to bowdlerizationstrike out portions of a word to avoid offending by using the full form of a profanity (fuckf**k), to preserve anonymity (Peter J***), or to avoid profanation of a holy name, especially in Jewish usage (GodG*d). Asterisks are sometimes used as an alternative to Bullet (typography)typographical bullets to indicate items of a list. Asterisks can be used in textual media to represent *emphasis (typography)emphasis* when bold textbold or italic text is not available (e.g. email). Asterisks can be used to correct yourself or others. *(replacement) implies that you are making a replacement. LinguisticsHistorical linguistics In historical linguistics, an asterisk immediately before a word indicates that the word is not directly attested, but has been linguistic reconstructionreconstructed on the basis of other linguistic material (see also comparative method). In the following example, the Proto-Germanic word ainlif is a reconstructed form. *ainlif endleofan elevenA double asterisk indicates a form that would be expected according to rule, but is not actually found: For the plural, **kubar would be expected, but separate masculine plural akbir and feminine plural kubrayt are found as irregular forms.Generativist tradition in linguistics In Generative linguisticsgenerativism, especially syntax, an asterisk in front of a word or phrase indicates that the word or phrase is grammarungrammatical. wake her up / *wake up her (in Standard American English) An asterisk before a parenthesis indicates that the lack of the word or phrase inside is ungrammatical, while an asterisk after a parenthesis indicates that the existence of the word or phrase inside is ungrammatical. go *(to) the station go (*to) home Ambiguity Since a word marked with an asterisk could mean either "unattested" or "impossible", it is important in some contexts to distinguish these meanings. In general, authors retain asterisk for "unattested", and prefix , **, or a superscript "?" for the latter meaning. Music In musical notation the sign indicates when the sustain pedal of the piano should be lifted. In liturgical music, an asterisk is often used to denote a deliberate pause. ComputingComputer science In computer science, the asterisk is used in regular expressions to denote zero or more repetitions of a pattern; this use is also known as the Kleene star or Kleene closure after Stephen Kleene. In the Unified Modeling Language, the asterisk is used to denote zero to many classes. Computer interfaces In some command line interfaces, such as the Unix shell and Microsoft's Command Prompt, the asterisk is the wildcard character and stands for any string (computer science)string of character (computing)characters. This is also known as a wildcard symbol. A common use of the wildcard is in searching for files on a computer. For instance, if a user wished to find a document called Document1, search terms such as Doc* and D*ment* would return this file. Document* would also return any file that begins with Document. In some graphical user interfaces an asterisk is pre- or appended to the current working document name shown in a window's title bar to indicate that unsaved changes exist. In Windows versions before XP the asterisk was also used as a mask to hide passwords being entered into a text box; later this was changed to a Bullet (typography)bullet. In Commodore InternationalCommodore (and related) filesystems, an asterisk appearing next to a filename in a directory listing denotes an improperly closed file, commonly called a "splat file." In travel industry Computer reservations systemGlobal Distribution Systems, the asterisk is the display command to retrieve all or part of a Passenger Name Record. In HTML web forms, an asterisk can be used to denote required fields. Chat Room etiquette calls on one asterisk to correct a misspelled word that has already been submitted. For example, one could post lck, then follow it with luck* to correct himself, or if it's someone else that notices the mistake, they would use *luck. Enclosing a phrase between two asterisks is used to denote an action the user is "performing", e.g. *pulls out a paper*, although this usage is also common on forums, and less so on most chat rooms due to /me or similar commands. Hyphens (-action-) and double colon (punctuation)colons (::action::) are also used for similar purposes. Adding machines and printing calculators Some international models of adding machines and calculatorprinting calculators use the asterisk to denote the total, or the terminal sum or difference of an addition or subtraction sequence, respectively, sometimes on the keyboard where the total key is marked with an asterisk and sometimes a capital T, and on the printout.Programming languages Many programming languages and calculators use the asterisk as a symbol for multiplication. It also has a number of special meanings in specific languages, for instance: In some programming languages such as the C (programming language)C, C++, and Go (programming language)Go programming languages, the asterisk is used to dereference or to declare a pointer variable. In the Common Lisp programming language, the names of global variables are conventionally set off with

Asterisk 17

asterisks, *LIKE-THIS*. In the Ada (programming language)Ada, Fortran, Perl, Python (programming language)Python, Ruby (programming language)Ruby programming languages, in some dialects of the Pascal programming language, and many others, a double asterisk is used to signify exponentiation: 5**3 is 5*5*5 or 125. In the PerlPerl programming language, the asterisk is used to refer to the typeglob of all variables with a given name. In the programming languages Ruby programming languageRuby and Python (programming language)Python, * has two specific uses. First, the unary * operator applied to a list object inside a function call will expand that list into the arguments of the function call. Second, a parameter preceded by * in the parameter list for a function will result in any extra positional parameters being aggregated into a tuple (Python) or array data typearray (Ruby), and likewise in Python a parameter preceded by ** will result in any extra named parameterkeyword parameters being aggregated into a associative arraydictionary. In the APL (programming language)APL language, the asterisk represents the Exponential functionexponential and exponentiation functions. In IBM Job Control Language, the asterisk has various functions, including in-stream data in the DD statement, the default print stream as SYSOUT=*, and as a self-reference in place of a procedure step name to refer to the same procedure step where it appears. Comments in computing In the B (programming language)B programming language and languages that borrow syntax from it, like C (programming language)C, PHP, Java (software platform)Java, or C Sharp (programming language)C#, comments (parts of the code not intended to be compiled into the program) are marked by an asterisk combined with the slash: /* Here is a comment. The compiler will ignore it. */ Some Pascal (programming language)Pascal-like programming languages, for example, Object Pascal, Modula-2, Modula-3, and Oberon (programming language)Oberon, as well as several other languages including ML (programming language)ML, Mathematica, AppleScript, OCaml, Standard ML, and Maple (software)Maple, use an asterisk combined with a parenthesis: (* This is a comment. The compiler will ignore it. *) CSS, while not strictly a programming language, also uses the slash-star comment format. body { /* This ought to make the text more readable for far-sighted people */ text-size:24pt; } Mathematics The asterisk has many uses in mathematics. The following list highlights some common uses and is not exhaustive. stand-alone An arbitrary point in some set. Seen, for example, when computing Riemann sums or when contracting a simply connected group to the singleton set { }. as a unary operator, denoted in prefix notation The Hodge dual operator on vector spaces *: A^k \rightarrow A^{n-k}. as a unary operator, written as a subscript The pushforward (differential) of a smooth map f between two smooth manifolds, denoted f. The complex conjugate of a complex number (the more common notation is \bar{z}). Complex Conjugate - from Wolfram MathWorld The conjugate transpose, Hermitian transpose, or adjoint matrix of a Matrix (mathematics)matrix. Hermitian adjoint. The multiplicative group of a Ring (mathematics)ring, especially when the ring is a Field (mathematics)field. E.g. \mathbb{C}^* = \mathbb{C}-\{0\}. The dual space of a vector space V, denoted V*. The combination of an indexed collection of objects into one example, e.g. the combination of all the cohomologycohomology groups Hk(X) into the cohomology ring H*(X). In statistics, z* and t* are given critical points for z-distributions and t-distributions, respectively.as a binary operator, in infix notation A notation for an arbitrary binary operator. The free product of two Group (mathematics)groups. f g is a convolution of f with g.The asterisk is used in all branches of mathematics to designate a correspondence between two quantities denoted by the same letter one with the asterisk and one without. Mathematical typography In fine mathematical typography, the Unicode character U+2217 asterisk operator (in HTML, ) is available. This character also appeared in the position of the regular asterisk in the PostScript symbol character set in the Symbol font included with Windows and Macintosh operating systems and with many printers. It should be used in fine typography for a large asterisk that lines up with the other mathematical operators.Fluid Mechanics In fluid mechanics, an asterisk in superscript is sometimes used to mean a property at sonic speed.White, F. M. Fluid Mechanics, Fourth Ed. WCB McGraw Hill.Statistical results In many scientific publications, the asterisk is employed as a shorthand to denote the statistical significance of results when testing hypothesishypotheses. When the likelihood that a result occurred by chance alone is below a certain level, one or more asterisks are displayed. Popular significance levels are 0.05 (*), 0.01 (**), and 0.001 (***). Human geneticsIn human genetics, * (haplogroup)* is used to denote that someone is a member of a haplogroup and not any of its subclades (see * (haplogroup)). Telephony On a Touch-Tone telephone keypad, the asterisk (called star, or less

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commonly, palm or sextile) is one of the two special keys (the other is the number sign (pound sign or hash or, less commonly, octothorp or square)), and is found to the left of the zero. They are used to navigate menus in Touch-Tone systems such as Voice mail, or in Vertical service codes.CricketIn cricket, it signifies a total number of runs scored by a batsman without losing his wicket, e.g. 107* means '107 not out'. When written before a player's name on a scorecard, it indicates the captain (cricket)captain of the team. It is also used on television when giving a career statistic during a match. For example, 47* in a number of matches column means that the current game is the player's 47th. Instant messaging and SMS When Typographical errortypos are made, it is customary to fix the mistake by sending another message, adding an asterisk to the beginning or end of the fixed line. Sometimes only a single word is corrected in this way, if it's obvious where the mistake was in the original message. Must be used before the word like Note (typography)note. Example 1 Tom: hey. how is brownie? Jane: ugh. my stupid xat ran away again!! Jane: *cat Tom: omg! sorry to hear that :( When the writer wants to explain actions in a kind of 'narrated' style while messaging, verbs are sometimes written between two asterisks, such as "*nods*" or "*shakes head*". This is known as an "emote". EconomicsIn economics, the use of an asterisk after a letter indicating a Variable (mathematics)variable such as price, output, or employment indicates that the variable is at its optimal level (that which is achieved in a perfect market situation). For instance, p* is the price level p when output y is at its corresponding optimal level of y*.Also in international economics asterisks are commonly used to denote economic variables in a foreign country. So, for example, "p" is the price of the home good and "p*" is the price of the foreign good, etc. EducationIn the General Certificate of Secondary EducationGCSE and Advanced Level General Certificate of EducationA-Level examinations in the United Kingdom and the Primary School Leaving ExaminationPSLE in Singapore, A* ("A-star") is a special top grade that is distinguished from grade A.In the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) examination in Hong Kong, 5** (5-star-star) and 5* (5-star) are two special top grades that are distinguished from Level 5. Level 5** is the highest level a candidate can attain in HKDSE. GamesCertain categories of character types in role-playing games are called splats, and the game supplements describing them are called splatbooks. This usage originated with the shorthand "*book" for this type of supplement to various World of Darkness games, such as Clanbook: Ventrue (for Vampire: The Masquerade) or Tribebook: Black Furies (for Werewolf: The Apocalypse), and this usage has spread to other games with similar character-type supplements. For example, Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition has had several lines of splatbooks: the "X & Y" series including Sword & Fist and Tome & Blood prior to the "3.5" revision, the "Complete X" series including Complete Warrior and Complete Divine, and the "Races of X" series including Races of Stone and Races of the Wild.In many MUDs and MOOs, as well as "male", "female", and other more esoteric genders, there is a gender called "splat", which uses an asterisk to replace the letters that differ in standard English gender pronouns. For example, h* is used rather than him or her. Also, asterisks are used to signify doing an action, for example, "*action*"Game show producer Mark Goodson used a six-pointed asterisk as his trademark. It is featured prominently on many set pieces from The Price Is Right (U.S. game show)The Price Is Right.Scrabble players put an asterisk after a word to indicate that an illegal play was made.BaseballIn recent years, the asterisk has come into use on scorecards to denote a "great defensive play." Baseball Almanac - Scoring Baseball: Advanced Symbols However, off scorecards, it can have the same connotation as in other sports; see below. Competitive sports and gamesIn colloquial usage, an asterisk is used to indicate that a World recordrecord is somehow tainted by circumstances, which are putatively explained in a footnote referenced by the asterisk.See e.g. This usage arose after the 1961 baseball season in which Roger Maris of the New York Yankees broke Babe Ruth's 34-year-old single-season home run record. Because Ruth had amassed 60 home runs in a season with only 154 games, compared to Maris's 61 over 162 games, baseball commissioner Ford Frick announced that Maris' accomplishment would be recorded in the record books with an explanation (often referred to as "an asterisk" in the retelling). In fact, Major League Baseball had no official record book at the time, but the stigma remained with Maris for many years, and the concept of a real or figurative asterisk denoting less-than-official records has become widely used in sports and other competitive endeavors. A 2001 TV movie about Maris' record-breaking season was called 61* (pronounced sixty-one asterisk) in reference to the controversy.In February 2011 the United States Olympic

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Committee and the Ad Council launched an Use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport#Anti-Dopingorganizations and legislationanti-steroid campaign called "Play Asterisk Free" Facebook.com aimed at teens. Thecampaign, whose logo uses a heavy asterisk, first launched in 2008 under the name Don't Be An Asterisk.Adcouncil.org, Ad Council, August 8, 2008Barry Bonds Fans critical of Barry Bonds, who has been accused ofusing performance-enhancing drugs during his baseball career, invoked the asterisk notion during the 2007 season,as he approached and later broke Hank Aaron's career home run record.See e.g. Opposing fans would often hold upsigns bearing asterisks whenever Bonds came up to bat. After Bonds hit his record-breaking 756th home run onAugust 7, 2007, fashion designer and entrepreneur Marc Ecko purchased the home run ball from the fan who caughtit, and ran a poll on his Web site to determine its fate. On September 26, Ecko revealed on NBC's Today (NBCprogram)Today show that the ball will be branded with an asterisk and donated to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Theball, marked with a die-cut asterisk, was finally delivered to the hall on July 2, 2008 after Marc Ecko unconditionallydonated the artifact rather than loaning it to the hall as originally intended. Marketing Asterisks (or other symbols)are commonly used in advertisements to refer readers to special terms/conditions for a certain statement, commonlyplaced below the statement in question. For example: an advertisement for a sale may have an asterisk after the word"sale" with the date of the sale at the bottom of the advertisement, similar to the way footnotes are used. ReligioustextsIn the Geneva Bible and the King James Bible, an asterisk is used to indicate a marginal comment or scripturereference. In the Leeser Bible, an asterisk is used to mark off the seven subdivisions of the weekly Torah portion. Itis also used to mark the few verses to be repeated by the reader of the Haftara. In American printings of the Book ofCommon Prayer, an asterisk is used to divide a verse of a Psalm in two portions for responsive reading. Britishprintings use a spaced colon (" : ") for the same purpose.Censorship Many companies which deal with slang orvulgar text might censor such words using an asterisk. This is often done by replacing a vowel with the asterisk.iTunes UK asterisk censors H*t T**n K****r P****y retrieved 9 April 2012 censorship options retrieved 9 April2012Encodings The Unicode standard states that the asterisk is distinct from U+066D Arabic five pointedstararabic five pointed star (HTML: ), U+2217 asterisk operator (HTML: ), andU+2731 heavy asterisk (HTML: ).The symbols are compared below (the display depends on yourbrowser's font). Asterisk Asterisk Operator Heavy Asterisk Small Asterisk Full Width Asterisk Open Centre Asterisk* Low Asterisk Arabic star East Asian reference mark Teardrop-Spoked Asterisk Sixteen Pointed Asterisk UnicodeDecimalUTF-8HTMLDisplayed AsteriskU+002A*2A* Small AsteriskU+FE61EFB9 A1 Full Width AsteriskU+FF0AEF BC 8A Low AsteriskU+204EE2 81 8E AsteriskOperatorU+2217E2 88 97 Heavy AsteriskU+2731E2 9C B1 Open CentreAsteriskU+2732E2 9C B2 Eight Spoked AsteriskU+2733E2 9C B3 Sixteen PointedAsteriskU+273AE2 9C BA Teardrop-Spoked AsteriskU+273BE2 9C BB Open CentreTeardrop-Spoked AsteriskU+273CE2 9C BC Heavy Teardrop-Spoked AsteriskU+273DE2 9CBD Four Teardrop-Spoked AsteriskU+2722E2 9C A2 Four Balloon-SpokedAsteriskU+2723E2 9C A3 Heavy Four Balloon-Spoked AsteriskU+2724E2 9C A4 FourClub-Spoked AsteriskU+2725E2 9C A5 Heavy Teardrop-Spoked PinwheelAsteriskU+2743E2 9D 83 Balloon-Spoked AsteriskU+2749E2 9D 89 EightTeardrop-Spoked Propeller AsteriskU+274AE2 9D 8A Heavy Eight Teardrop-Spoked PropellerAsteriskU+274BE2 9D 8B Arabic starU+066DD9 AD East Asian referencemarkU+203BE2 80 BB Plane (Unicode)#Supplementary Special-purpose PlaneTagAsteriskU+E002AF3 A0 80 AA(N/A) References

At sign 20

At sign

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@ At sign Punctuationapostrophe ( ' ) brackets ( [], (), {}, ) Colon (punctuation)colon ( : ) comma ( , ) dash ( , , , ) ellipsis ( , ..., . . . ) exclamation mark ( ! ) Full stopfull stop/period ( . ) guillemets ( ) hyphen ( ) hyphen-minus ( - ) question mark ( ? ) quotation marks ( , , '', "" ) semicolon ( ; ) Slash (punctuation)slash/stroke/solidus ( /, ) Word dividers interpunct ( ) Space (punctuation)space () ( ) ( ) General typographyampersand ( & ) asterisk ( * ) at sign ( @ ) backslash ( \ ) Bullet (typography)bullet ( ) caret ( ^ ) Dagger (typography)dagger ( , ) Degree symboldegree ( ) ditto mark ( ) Inverted question and exclamation marksinverted exclamation mark ( ) Inverted question and exclamation marksinverted question mark ( ) number signnumbersign/pound/hash ( # ) numero sign ( ) obelus ( ) ordinal indicator ( , ) Percent signpercent, per mil ( %, ) basis point ( ) pilcrow ( ) Prime (symbol)prime ( , , ) section sign ( ) tilde ( ~ ) Underscoreunderscore/understrike ( _ ) Vertical barverticalbar/brokenbar/pipe ( , | ) Intellectual propertycopyright symbol ( ) registered trademark symbolregistered trademark ( ) Service mark symbolservice mark ( ) sound recording copyright symbolsound recording copyright ( ) Trademark symboltrademark ( ) Currency Currency (typography)currency (generic) ( ) Currency signcurrency (specific) ( Argentine austral Thai baht Ghana cedi Cent (currency) Costa Rican coln Brazilian cruzeiro European Currency Unit Dollar sign$ Vietnamese dong Bangladeshi_taka Greek drachma Euro sign Florin sign French franc Paraguayan guaran Hryvnia sign Lao kip Turkish lira sign German gold mark Mill (currency) Nigerian naira Spanish peseta Philippine peso sign Pfennig Pound sign Indian rupee sign Rupee sign Shekel sign Kazakhstani tenge Mongolian tgrg Won sign Cambodian riel ) Uncommon typographyAsterism (typography)asterism ( ) Index (typography)index/fist ( ) interrobang ( ) irony punctuation ( ) lozenge ( ) reference mark ( ) Tie (typography)tie ( ) Related diacriticdiacritical marksList of logic symbolslogic symbolswhitespace characters Non-English usage of quotation marksnon-English quotation style ( , ) In other scripts Chinese punctuationHebrew punctuationJapanese punctuationKorean punctuation Wikipedia book Book Category Category Portal PortalThe at sign @ is also commonly called the at symbol, ampersat, apetail or commercial at in Englishand less commonly a wide range of other terms. "ASCII", The Jargon File (version 4.4.7) "@: 'Commercial at' doesn't sound sexy", Tom Angleberger, The Roanake Times" "New York's Moma claims @ as a design classic", Jemima Kiss, 28 March 2010, The Observer "The at symbol a la mode." The fact that there is no single word in English for the symbol has prompted some writers to use the French arobase "Short Cuts", Daniel Soar, Vol. 31 No. 10 28 May 2009 page 18, London Review of Books or Spanish and Portuguese arrobaor to coin new words such as asperand, ampersat "....Tim Gowens offered the highly logical "ampersat" ...", 05 February 1996, The Independentbut none of these has achieved wide currency.Originally an accounting and commercial invoice abbreviation meaning "at the rate of" (e.g. 7 Widget (economics)widgets @ Dollar sign$2 = $14), it was not included on the keyboard of the earliest commercially successful typewriters, but was on at least one 1889 model "The @-symbol, part 2 of 2", shadycharacters.co.uk and the very successful Underwood Typewriter CompanyUnderwood models from the "Underwood No. 5" in 1900 onward. It is now universally included on computer keyboards. In recent years, its meaning has grown to include the sense of being "located at" or "directed at", especially in Emailemail addresses and social media, particularly Twitter. The mark is encoded at U+0040 @ At signcommercial at (HTML: @). HistoryThe @ symbol appears in the Medieval Bulgarian translation of the

At sign 21

Manasses Chronicle (c. 1345). The symbol is used as the initial "a" for the "amin" (amen) formula.Evidence of the usage of @ to signify French "" (meaning "at") from a 1674 protocol from a SwedenSwedish lower court and magistrate (Arboga rdhusrtt och magistrat)The Aragonese peopleAragonese historian Jorge Romance located the appearance of the @ symbol at the "taula de Ariza" registry from 1448, to denote a wheat shipment from Crown of CastileCastile to the Kingdom of Aragon. There are several theories about the origin of the commercial at character. The symbol developed as a mercantile shorthand symbol of "each at"the symbol resembling a small "a" inside a small "e"to distinguish it from the different "at" (symbolized by the mere letter "a") or "per." For example, the cost of "12 apples @ $1" would be $12, whereas the cost of "12 apples at $1" would be $1a crucial and necessary distinction.[citation needed] Medieval monks abbreviated the Latin word ad (at, toward, by, about) next to a numerical digitnumeral. One reason for this abbreviation was that it saved space and ink. Since thousands of pages of biblical manuscripts were copied onto expensive papyrus or hides, and the words at, toward, by and about repeated millions of times throughout the ages, a considerable amount of resources could be spared this way. A theory concerning this graphic puts forward the idea that the form derives from the Latin word ad,Wikipedia:Please clarify where the d is spelled in capital, and then inversed back over the a in front of it, thus forming a shape that resembles the @.[citation needed] It was originally an abbreviation of the Greek preposition (transliterated ana), meaning at the rate of or per.[citation needed] From Norman French "" meaning "at" in the "each" sense, i.e. "2 widget (economics)widgets Pound sign5.50 = 11.00", comes the accountancy shorthand notation in English peopleEnglish commercial vouchers and ledgers to the 1990s, when the email usage superseded the accountancy usage. It is also used like this in Modern French and Swedish; in this view, the at-symbol is a stylised form of that avoids raising the writing hand from the page in drawing the symbol; this compromise between @ and in French handwriting is found in street market signs.[citation needed]Whatever the origin of the @ symbol, the history of its usage is more well-known: it has long been used in Spanish languageSpanish and Portuguese languagePortuguese as an abbreviation of arroba, a unit of weight equivalent to 25 pounds, and derived from the Arabic languageArabic expression of "a quarter" ( pronounced ar-rub). An Italian academic claims to have traced the @ symbol to the 16th century, in a mercantile document sent by Francesco Lapi from Seville to Rome on May 4, 1536. The document is about commerce with Francisco PizarroPizarro, in particular the price of an @ of wine in Peru. In Italian, the symbol was interpreted to mean amphora (anfora). Currently, the word arroba means both the at-symbol and a unit of weight. In Italian, the symbol represents one amphora, a unit of weight and volume based upon the capacity of the standard amphora jar, and entered modern meaning and use as "at the rate of" or "at price of" in northern Europe.Modern usesCommercial In contemporary English usage, @ is a commercial symbol, called at site or at rate meaning at and at the rate of. It has rarely been used in financial documentsWikipedia:Please clarify or grocers' price tags, and is not used in standard typography.Robert BringhurstBringhurst, Robert (2002). The Elements of Typographic Style (version 2.5), p.272. Vancouver: Hartley & Marks. ISBN 0-88179-133-4.Since 23 October 2012, the At-sign is registered as a trade mark by the German Patent and Trade Mark Office DPMA (registration number 302012038338) for @T.E.L.L. While company promoters have claimed that it may from now on be illegal for other commercial interests to use the At-sign, this only applies to identical or confusingly similar goods Article 5 Trade Marks Directive, as interpreted in Case C-251/95 Sabel BV v Puma AG [1997] ECR I-6191 and no court, German or otherwise, has yet ruled on this purported illegality. Contemporary usage A common contemporary use of @ is in email addresses (transmitted by Simple Mail Transfer ProtocolSMTP), as in jdoe@example.com (the user jdoe located at site the example.com domain). BBN Technologies' Ray Tomlinson is credited with introducing this usage in 1971. Who sent the first e-mail? This idea of the symbol representing located at in the form user@host is also seen in other tools and protocols; for example, the Unix shell command ssh jdoe@example.net tries to establish an secure Shellssh connection to the computer with the hostname example.net using the username jdoe.On web pages, organizations often obscure email addresses of their members or employees by omitting the @. This practice, known as address munging, makes the email addresses less vulnerable to spam programs that scan the internet for them. Another contemporary use of the @ symbol in American English is adding information about a sporting event. Opposing sports teams sometimes have their names separated by a v. (for versus). However, the "v." may be

At sign 22

replaced with "@" when also conveying at which team's home field the game will be played. In this case, the away team is written first.For an example, see: http://www.nfl.com/schedulesOn some online forums without threaded discussions, @ is used to denote a reply; for instance: "@Jane" to respond to a comment Jane made earlier. Similarly, in some cases, @ is used for "attention" in email messages originally sent to someone else. For example, if an email was sent from Catherine to Steve, but in the body of the email, Catherine wants to make Keirsten aware of something, Catherine will start the line "@Keirsten" to indicate to Keirsten that the following sentence concerns her. This also helps with mobile email users who cannot see bold or color in email. In microblogging (such as Twitter and StatusNet-based microblogs), @ before the user name is used to send publicly readable replies (e.g. "@otheruser: Message text here"). The blog and client software can automatically interpret these as links to the user in question. This use of the @ symbol was also made available to Facebook users on September 15, 2009. Tag Friends in Your Status and Posts | Facebook Blog In Internet Relay Chat (IRC), it is often shown before a user's nick to mark the operator of a channel. @ is also used on many wireless routers/modems, where a solid green @ symbol indicates the router is connected and a solid amber @ indicates there is a problem. Computer programming @ is used in various programming languages although there is not a consistent theme to its usage. For example: In ALGOL 68, the @ symbol is brief form of the at keyword; it is used to change the lower bound of an array. For example: arrayx[@88] now refers to an array starting at index 88. In C Sharp (programming language)C#, it denotes "verbatim strings", where no characters are escaped and two double-quote characters represent a single double-quote. 2.4.4.5 String literals, As a prefix it also allows keywords to be used as identifiers. 2.4.2 Identifiers In the ASP.NET MVC Microsoft ASP.NET Razor view engineRazor template markup syntax, the @ character denotes the start of code statement blocks or the start of text content. Razor syntax quick reference ASP.NET MVC 3: Razors @: and syntax In Forth (programming language)Forth, it is used to fetch values from the address on the top of the stack. The operator is pronounced as "fetch". In Haskell (programming language)Haskell, it is used in so-called at-patterns. This notation can be used to give aliases to pattern matchingpatterns, making them more readable. In Java (programming language)Java, it has been used to denote annotations, a kind of metadata, since version 5.0. In ML (programming language)ML, it denotes list concatenation. In modal logic, specifically when representing possible worlds, @ is sometimes used as a logical symbol to denote the actual world (the world we are 'at'). In Objective-C, @ is prefixed to language-specific keywords such as @implementation and to form string literals. In Pascal (programming language)Pascal, @ is the "address of" operator (it tells the location at which a variable is found). In Perl, @ prefixes Variable (programming)variables which contain Array data structurearrays. In PHP, it is used just before an Expression (programming)expression to make the Interpreter (computing)interpreter suppress errors that would be generated from that expression. PHP: Error Control Operators Manual In Python (programming language)Python 2.4 and up, it is used to Python syntax and semantics#Decoratorsdecorate a function (wrap the function in another one at creation time). In Ruby (programming language)Ruby, @ prefixes instance variables, and @@ prefixes class variables. In Scala (programming language)Scala, it is used to denote annotations (as in Java), and also to bind names to subpatterns in pattern-matching expressions. In Transact-SQLT-SQL, @ prefixes variables. In several xBase-type programming languages, like DBASE, FoxPro 2FoxPro/Visual FoxPro and Clipper (programming language)Clipper, it is used to denote position on the screen. For example: @1,1 SAY "HELLO" to show the word "HELLO" in line 1, column 1. In FoxPro 2FoxPro/Visual FoxPro, it is also used to indicate explicit Pass by reference#Call by referencepass by reference of variables when calling Subroutineprocedures or functions (but it is not an Memory addressaddress Operator (programming)operator). In Windows PowerShell, @ is used to reference Hash Tables. Gender-neutrality in Spanish and Portuguese In Portuguese languagePortuguese and Spanish languageSpanish, as well in other West Iberian languages where many words end in '-o' when in the masculine Grammatical gendergender and end '-a' in the feminine, @ can be used as a gender-neutral pronoungender-neutral substitute for the default 'o' ending, which some advocates of gender-neutral languagegender-neutral language-modification feel indicates implicit linguistic disregard for women. These languages do not possess a neutral gender and the masculine forms are also used traditionally when referring to groups of mixed or unknown sex. The at-sign is intended to replace the desinence '-o', including its plural form '-os',

At sign 23

due to the resemblance to a digraph of an inner letter 'a' and an outer letter 'o'. As an example of the @ being used for gender-inclusive purposes, we can consider the Spanish and Portuguese word amigos. When the word represents not only male friends, but also female ones, the proponents of a gender-inclusive language replace it with amig@s. In this sense, amigos would be used only when the writer is sure the group referred to is all-male. Usage of amigas is the same in traditional and such new forms of communication. Alternative forms for a gender-inclusive at-sign would be the Slash (punctuation)slash sign (amigos/as) and the Anarchist symbolism#Circle-Acircle-A, (amigs) maybe as a kind of "bisexual digraph." However (as) is more used, using the male first, and the feminine in brackets, amigos(as). For more about this, see Satiric misspelling.The Real Academia Espaola disapproves the use of the at-sign as a letter. DPD 1 edicin, 2 tiradaOther uses and meanings In (especially English) scientific and technical literature, @ is used to describe the conditions under which data are valid or a measurement has been made. E.g. the density of saltwater may read d = 1.050 g/cm @ 15C (read "at" for @), density of a gas d = 0,150 g/L @ 20C, 1 bar, or noise of a car 81 dB @ 80km/h (speed). As an abbreviation for alias in articles about missing persons, obituaries, brief reports - for instance: "John Smith @ Jean Smyth" (a possible abbreviation of List of acronyms and initialisms: A#AKaka).[citation needed] In chemical formulae, @ is used to denote Chemical formula#Trapped atomstrapped atoms or molecules. For instance, La@C60 means lanthanum inside a fullerene cage. See article Endohedral fullerene for details. In Malagasy languageMalagasy, @ is an informal abbreviation for the prepositional form amin'ny. In genetics, @ is the abbreviation for locus (genetics)locus, as in IGL@ for immunoglobulin lambda locus. In the Koalib language of Sudan, @ is used as a letter in Arabic languageArabic loanwords. The Unicode Consortium rejected a proposal to encode it separately as a letter in Unicode, but SIL International uses Private Use Area code points U+F247 and U+F248 for lowercase and capital versions.Constable, Peter, and Lorna A. Priest (October 12, 2009) SIL Corporate PUA Assignments 5.2a. SIL International. pp. 59-60. Retrieved on April 12, 2010. A schwa, as the actual schwa character "" may be difficult to produce on many computers. It is used in this capacity in the ASCII International Phonetic AlphabetIPA schemes SAMPA, X-SAMPA and Kirshenbaum. In leet it may substitute for the letter "A". It is frequently used in typing and text messaging as an abbreviation for "at". In Portugal and Brazil, it may be used in typing and text messaging with the meaning "french kiss" (linguado). In online discourse, @ is used by some Anarchismanarchists as a substitute for the traditional Anarchist symbolism#Circle-Acircle-A..... Names in other languages In many languages other than English, although most typewriters included the symbol, the use of @ was less common before email became widespread in the mid-1990s. Consequently, it is often perceived in those languages as denoting "The Internet", computerization, or modernization in general. In Afrikaans languageAfrikaans, it is called "aapstert", meaning "monkey tail". Similar to the Dutch use of the word. In Arabic languageArabic, it is at spelled (using the English pronunciation). In Armenian languageArmenian, it is "shnik" () which means puppy. In Azerbaijani languageAzeri, it is at (using the English pronunciation). In Basque languageBasque, it is "a bildua" (wrapped a). In Belarusian languageBelarusian, it's called "" ("helix", "snail") In Bosnian languageBosnian, it is "ludo a" ("crazy a"). In Bulgarian languageBulgarian, it is called ("klyomba", means nothing else) or (maymunsko a "monkey A"), maimunka (), "little monkey". In Catalan languageCatalan, it is called 'arrova' (which means a unit of measure), or 'ensamada' (because of the similar shape of this food speciality) In Chinese In mainland China, it is quan A (A), meaning "circled A / enclosed A" or hua A (A), meaning "lacy A". Sometimes as xiao laoshu (), meaning "little mouse". Nowadays, for most of China's youth, it is at (using the English pronunciation). In Taiwan, it is xiao laoshu (). In Hong Kong and Macau, it is at (using the English pronunciation). In Croatian languageCroatian, it is most often referred to by the English word at. Informally, it is called a manki, coming from the local pronunciation of the English word, monkey. Note that the Croatian word for monkey, majmun, is not used to denote @. In Czech languageCzech, and Slovak languageSlovak, it is called zavin, which means (rollmops). In Danish languageDanish, it is snabel-a ("(elephant's) trunk-a"). In Dutch languageDutch, it is called apenstaartje ("(little) monkey-tail"). In Esperanto, it is called e-signo ("at" for the email use, with an address pronounced zamenhof e esperanto punkto org), po-signo ("each"refers only to the mathematical use) or heliko ("snail"). in Estonian languageEstonian, it is also called at, meaning "@". In Faroese languageFaroese, it is kurla (sounds "curly"), hj

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("at"), tranta and snpil-a ("(elephant's) trunk-a")