The story behind # and @
The Pound is Hash, ASPERAND is At
The hashtag has not always been known as a hashtag. Also, the at-sign has not always been a way to address someone.
The internet has changed so many things and not just how we communicate with each other. Symbols we have always known as one thing have changed to mean something else.
Two signs (hashtag and asperand) have been used for different things for hundreds of years. After the internet became mainstream, they are now known as something different. Now the pound sign is a hashtag, and the asperand is at.
Pound, Number, Hash, Octothorpe, Sharp
History
The origin of the first use of the hashtag is not clear. Some theories are that it evolved from writing the abbreviation “lb” for “libra pondo” or “pound in weight” in Roman times. They would write “lb” with a line through the top to show that it was a lowercase “L” rather than the number one. As it was written over and over, it could have naturally evolved into the hash-looking symbol.
In the 17th-century, English printers made it an official character by having it preserved in the lead as a symbol to be used in printing (on printing presses). It became used as a symbol to indicate numbers (#2 pencil anyone?), weight (50#’s), checkmate, a sharp musical note (♯), among a few others. In the 19th-century, the symbol took off when it was included on Bell Lab’s telephones in the 1960s.
#BirthOfHashtag
August 23, 2007, Chris Messina (a former Google developer) wanted a way to group messages on Twitter to bring people together who were discussing the same topic online. On that day, he sent out the following tweet:
He chose # because it was easy to reach on his 2007 Nokia and was already being used in IRC chat rooms.
August 25, 2007, Stowe Boyd said, “I support the hashtag convention.”
Many haters thought that the “hashtag” would never pick up. Twitter itself even saying “These things are for nerds. They’re never going to catch on.”
The fall of 2007 was the first widespread use of the hashtag when a fire erupted in San Diego County. In 2008, conservative groups started using it to encourage Congress to vote on an energy bill. In 2009, Twitter adopted the hashtag and implemented a way to search to find out who else was using a particular hashtag.
In 2010, they introduced “Trending Topics,” which displayed popular hashtags at a given time. When Instagram was born in October 2010, they supported hashtag functionality right away. In 2013 Facebook added support. The rest of the social media sites soon followed Twitter’s footsteps as well.
Alternate Names
Not everyone calls this symbol the same thing. Here are a few variations I have discovered:
· Pound Sign, Number Sign (USA, Canada)
· Hash (UK, Ireland)
· Octothorpe (Mayo Clinic & Bell Labs) (my favorite)
Ad, At, Amphora, Arroba, Asperand
History
Again, there are many theories of the use of @. One theory is that Medieval monks converted the Latin word for “toward” (ad) to an “a” with the back part of the “d” as the tail. It could also have evolved from the abbreviation of “each at,” with the ‘a’ encased by the “e.”
In 1448, a document for a shipment of wheat from Castille to Aragon, where @ was used to indicate weight (Spanish used the word arroba). In 1536, a letter from Seville to Rome, written by Francesco Lapi, used @ to denote units of wine (called amphorae or amphora).
From then on, it became a way to note weight or volume.
Catalan, Spanish & Portuguese used @ as an abbreviation of arroba. Arroba is a weight equal to 25 pounds and is derived from the Arabic expression “the quarter” (ar-rub). Venetians used amphora (anfora) as a unit of weight and volume based on the capacity of a standard amphora jar.
Merchants also used it as a way to denote “at a rate of.”
The @ did not start appearing on typing devices until the late 1880’s with the birth of typewriters.
@Asperand
In 1971 when computer scientist Ray Tomlinson was looking to connect people, he needed a symbol that wasn’t already widely used in programming. @ was available, and it was already called “at” in French in English, making it the perfect symbol.
He wanted a way to address a message to someone at a different computer, and the equal sign didn’t make much sense. So @ was used between the individual’s name and the name of their computer on Arpanet. The rest is history after that. Since @ was already used before the Internet, it didn’t have the hashtag's blowback when it was introduced as a symbol for Internet use.
Alternate Names
Since this symbol has been around for so long, there are many different names for it in different languages.
· Danish: snabel (elephant’s trunk)
· Finnish: kissanhnta (cat’s tail)
· German: klammeraffe (hanging monkey) or affenohr (monkey ear)
· Greek: papaki (little duck)
· Hungarian: kukac (worm)
· Korean: dalphaengi (snail)
· Norwegian: grisehale (pig’s tail)
· Russian: sobachka (little dog)
My favorite has to be the French, Spanish, and Portuguese arobase/arroba or the Italian amphora.
#Correct @user
Now that you know what hashtags are, here are some tips on using them correctly. First of all, they should start with the # symbol. For Twitter, hashtags won’t work with spaces, punctuation, or any other symbols. Also, your account needs to be public else. Others won’t see your content.
Don’t use too many words, be relevant, be specific and DON’T use synonyms for other hashtags. So don’t do this: #happy #joy #cheerful #content #delighted #glad #blessed #thrilled #pleased #overjoyed. We get it. You’re happy.
Another don’t is using unrelated words: #couch #blue #sticker #pill #cube #unicorn. Your hashtags should be related to your post. Those tags won't work if your image doesn’t have a blue couch with a pink sticker and a cubed unicorn.
Using the most popular hashtags isn’t the best course of action either. Some are overused already (#blessed). Others started innocently and turned bad. Be sure to search for the hashtags you want to use to make sure they are not blocked. Like “elevator,” it’s blocked on Instagram.
- 2 hashtags are the acceptable amount per post
- Use at the start of your comment for emphasis
- Use in the middle to highlight a keyword
- Use at the end for context
- Use @ to reply to someone. It then appears in their inbox
- Also @ someone as a sign of attribution
- You can @ someone whether they follow you or not
- Send someone a message and start it with @username. Only the people that follow both you and the tagged user can see the comment
- If you have anything before @username, the feature won’t work
- 1–2 hashtags are acceptable
- Hashtags are more challenging to track for a business as many users’ profiles are private
- It doesn’t differentiate between a hashtag or a keyword when searching
- Like Twitter, use @username to get someone’s attention, your post will then appear on their page as well as yours
- 5–10 hashtags are best
- Putting your hashtags in the first comment rather than the caption helps your followers focus on the caption more
- You can also put your hashtags below a few lines of space after your caption
- Your profile must be public, or hashtags won’t appear in search
- Hashtags do allow numbers, but no spaces or special characters
- You can only add hashtags to your posts, not to comments on other’s posts
- After 30 hashtags on posts and 10 on stories, you are unable to add more
LinkedIn, YouTube & Pinterest
- 1–3 hashtags for LinkedIn
- 2–3 hashtags for YouTube
- 2–5 hashtags for Pinterest
- LinkedIn: the site is professional, so your hashtags should be as well
- YouTube doesn’t allow more than 15 hashtags
- You can add to titles and descriptions on YouTube
- If you don’t add to your YouTube video title, the first three from your description are added above your title
- YouTube hyperlinks hashtags to ease in search
- Pinterest was late to the game and only added hashtags in 2018
- There isn’t much data for Pinterest on which hashtags make pins perform better or worse
- Pinterest uses hashtags the same as keywords in the search
Resources for Finding and Using Hashtags
https://hashtagify.me/ can be used to find the best hashtags to use for your content. Enter your desired hashtag for Twitter or Instagram, and it will show you a lot of data. It shows you how popular a hashtag is over the long term versus recently. It shows how much it has been trending this week and this month. Hashtags that are related are shown in a tag cloud, with the better related showing larger in the cloud. It shows which users have used the hashtag the most, as well as a line graph showing its popularity for the past 2 months. It shows spelling and capitalization variations as well.
There is seriously so much useful information on this site. I fell in love with this site.
On Ritetag, you can search for your desired hashtag, and it will show you related hashtags sorted by popularity. It also shows popularity for related hashtags over time. So you can see if a related tag performs well in the long term or is just a fad. It also shows hashtags that are only good on Instagram. In the end, there is a brainstorm-like chart that shows how related tags relate to the original hashtag. This site could be useful, but I prefer the first site much more.
Final Thoughts
Changing the name of the pound sign to hashtag was such a big deal because people had been using it for so long. I still call it a pound sign and use it to replace “lb.” I also still use it to indicate a number, like the #2 pencil. I get irritated when people refer to the pound/number sign on a phone or keypad as a hashtag because that’s not the correct term.
As far as the at-sign, the usage didn’t change as drastically as the pound sign did. It still means at. It just was transferred over to be used in technology. I think that symbol had a much easier time transitioning to a digital meaning from its analog origin.
More importantly, content writers, content distributors, web designers, and online marketers have these at their disposal, and to be able to use them effectively will only help the end goal.
