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The @ Sign Has Been Around Since 1536, So What Was It Used For Pre-Internet?
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this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2026
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In Iberia and Latin America the symbol was often used for a unit of weight, the arroba ("arrova" or "rova" in Catalan), between 10kg and 15kg. Nowadays the unit itself is mostly gone*, but the symbol got the name, and it's used way more nowadays than it used to.
Some also use it nowadays to avoid grammatical gender marks; e.g. Portuguese "@ alun@" for "the student", instead of "a aluna" (feminine; implied woman) or "o aluno" (masculine). That works in PT/ES because usually the gender marks are -a and -o, and the symbol kind of resembles both.
* The only exception I recall is sales of a few bulk goods; which ones vary from place to place, but it's stuff like cattle, taters, grains, cocoa etc.