What's in a symbol?

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So here I am @ home working @ putting together a post on the Asperand symbol. For those who know my aversion to this newspeak that blankets our modern world of tweeting and SMS texting (and increasingly so in the world of email and even paper writing, yes, academic paper writing at the university level... but that's a whole other blog post), this may seem a strange post. But, here we go.

I recently heard that the Museum of Modern Art in New York has added the Asperand (@) to its architecture and design collection. Apparently this ubiquitous little symbol, which is now an indelible part of our culture, has a long history. This surprised me as I had never noticed it until the advent of email (which make sense since I had never really looked at a keyboard with anything resembling interest until I procured my first email account... mc_diplo@yahoo.com).

It would seem that medeival monks had created (or at the very least utilized) the Asperand as a ligature symbol in the stead of the Latin preposition ad (to, towards, near, until, etc.). When preceding numbers this preposition takes on the gloss of 'about', which is the sense in which they used it. If there was any doubt about why this might interest me, let it be known that anything connected with Latin will likely interest me (which includes, to some degree or other, most things in western culture).

I've also heard that it was used by Venetian merchants in the 16th century, traveled around Europe (France, Spain, Portugal, etc.), eventually ended up on the first typewriter around the end of the 19th century, and from there found its way into every home in the western world on laptops, cellphones and every other little tech-tool that's cool to carry.

In English, we call this little guy (or gal?) an 'Asperand'. Not terribly exciting. The Italian call it the 'snail' (chiocciola). The Dutch and Germans call it the 'monkey tail'; the Chinese, the 'little mouse' and the Russians have given it the nickname, 'doggie'.

Who knew? So much fun packed into this little symbol. I wonder though, does the Asperand appear more feminine or masculine? I would tend towards the feminine: all those curves.

What's in a symbol? A rich history apparently.


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