Editing At sign (section)

=== Social media ===
{{Further|Mention (blogging)}}
On some social media platforms and forums, usernames may be prefixed with an @ (in the form <code>@johndoe</code>); this type of username is frequently referred to as a "[[User (computing)|handle]]".{{citation needed|date=November 2022}}

On online forums without [[threaded discussion]]s, @ is commonly used to denote a reply; for instance: <code>@Jane</code> 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 {{code|@Keirsten}} to indicate to Keirsten that the following sentence concerns her.{{citation needed|date=November 2022}} This also helps with mobile email users who might not see bold or color in email.

In [[microblogging]] (such as on [[Twitter]], [[GNU social]]- and [[ActivityPub]]-based microblogs), an @ before the user name is used to send publicly readable replies (e.g. <code>@otheruser: Message text here</code>). The blog and client software can automatically interpret these as links to the user in question. When included as part of a person's or company's contact details, an @ symbol followed by a name is normally understood to refer to a Twitter handle. A similar use of the @ symbol was also made available to Facebook users on September 15, 2009.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Tag Friends in Your Status and Posts – Facebook Blog |url=http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=109765592130 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091026120029/http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=109765592130 |archive-date=2009-10-26}}</ref> In [[Internet Relay Chat]] (IRC), it is shown before users' nicknames to denote they have operator status on a channel.