I would still like to know why we are using @ anytime we mention someone's name?

Old Salt

Old Salt

Senior Member
Location
New Brunswick, Canada!
Sorry, I've been out of the loop for the past couple of years but I am startled by this change. Why not just mention a person's name without the @. It started with twitter but there it usually leads to a subject. Is it a faux pas if I address a poster directly without the @ ? I don't expect many replies but would like to know in order to prevent awkwardness!
 

Just this: Back in the day if two kids said the same thing at the same time you said "Owe me a coke"!
I can't remember what happened if you both said " Owe me a coke!" at the same time. I think you were owed two cokes.
 
If you specifically want to tag someone, the @ sends a notification to the person, as offered above.
If I am simply commenting about a member, and don't necessarily want to draw attention to it, it is safe to type their name alone.
 
Right Now said:
If you specifically want to tag someone, the @ sends a notification to the person, as offered above.
If I am simply commenting about a member, and don't necessarily want to draw attention to it, it is safe to type their name alone.
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I generally use the name alone, if I am directly replying to his/her post! Is that okay!
 
hearlady said:
Just this: Back in the day if two kids said the same thing at the same time you said "Owe me a coke"!
I can't remember what happened if you both said " Owe me a coke!" at the same time. I think you were owed two cokes.
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In southern Ontario, if two people said the same thing, one would touch the other (usually on the arm) and say, "Coats on ya," with emphasis on "on."

Doesn't make any sense. Maybe it was originally Cooties on ya. Or it could have been from another language.
 
I use it often, especially when I am commenting on You Tube videos. Being that there are several comments, I use it to acknowledge the person's comment. However, as others has stated, it's not necessary. Boils down to personal choice - to use or not. :)
 
I use in a thread instead of hitting reply or quote. For instance, if a someone posts a photo of a beautiful winter boots, I might say "@hollydolly probably has these in her closet!" It brings HD into a conversation she might have otherwise missed and gives her a chance to admire something I know she favors.
 
Alligatorob said:
I only figured the @ thing out about a year ago, nothing obvious about it.
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See it was obvious to me the first week here. But then i usually figure out mystery books and movies early on. Being notified and going to post where i was mentioned a clue. And names appear different with and without @
Alligatorob vs. @Alligatorob

Bonus of using it--if you don't want to scroll up to check spelling of screen name (or they're not on that thread but you think they'd be interested in it) using the @ pulls up options once you type a few letters and if more than one similar screen name on SF you can click the one you need.
 
Old Salt said:
Sorry, I've been out of the loop for the past couple of years but I am startled by this change. Why not just mention a person's name without the @. It started with twitter but there it usually leads to a subject. Is it a faux pas if I address a poster directly without the @ ? I don't expect many replies but would like to know in order to prevent awkwardness!
Click to expand...

No way Jay. Computer syntax conventions and standards appeared well before the rise of web boards, mainly during the UNIX and computer languages development era well before the rise of the Internet in the 1990s. Was a UNIX shell user and test programmer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign

Email addresses

A common contemporary use of @ is in email addresses (using the SMTP system), as in jdoe@example.com (the user jdoe located at the domain example.com). Ray Tomlinson of BBN Technologies is credited for having introduced this usage in 1971.[4][14] 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 ssh connection to the computer with the hostname example.net using the username jdoe.

On web pages, organizations often obscure the 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.
 

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