Swastika in Microsoft font, @ symbol in Hollywood movie

Following a user complaint, Microsoft on Friday apologised for an "unintentional oversight" that caused two swastikas to be included in a font in its new Office suite. Meanwhile, a much more popular symbol, the 'at' sign, or @, - is to be celebrated in a Hollywood movie.

The swastikas were contained in Japanese font set 'Bookshelf Symbol 7'. According to Reuters, such symbols have been used in Japan as representations of Buddha's feet or footprints, but after being adopted by Adolf Hitler as the symbol of the Nazi Party (apparently because of its nationalist identification), it has a very different connotation in western eyes.

In an open letter published on the company's web site, Microsoft Office Senior Vice President Steven Sinofsky apologised for the error and for any offence caused. He explained:

"Due to an unintentional oversight, we failed to identify, prior to the release, the presence of two swastikas within the font."

Microsoft has released a utility to allow users to remove the offending font.

On a lighter note, the most popular on-line symbol, the @ sign, which has never had an official name in English, is set for the Hollywood treatment, according to a report by The Times.

The @, or 'at' sign, is used in every e-mail address worldwide because, in 1971, a computer engineer called Ray Tomlinson chose it when sending what many believe was the first e-mail, while working on a means of transferring files across the ARPANET, the forerunner of today's internet.

According to The Times, the origins of @ can be traced back more than a thousand years. Monks created the sign as an abbreviation of the Latin word "ad" meaning "to", "towards", "near" or "at". They wrote "a", and then curled the tail of the "d" around it. Many years later, account clerks used the sign to show that a number of goods were retailing "at" a certain price.

"This won it a place on the first typewriters," explains The Times, "where it remained, largely neglected" – until Tomlinson adopted it in 1971.

"I thought about other symbols," he told Forbes.com in 1998, "but @ didn't appear in any names, so it worked." He used it to create the first e-mail address ”tomlinson@bbn-tenexa” to send a message between two computers in the same room, but via a 15-terminal network.

Tomlinson has recalled that his seminal message read simply: "QWERTYUIOP." In 2001, on the 30th anniversary of that first e-mail, Tomlinson was honoured with the Webby Award for lifetime achievement, given to him by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

His profile is set to be raised further, now that his story is being turned into a Hollywood script.

The Times article is well worth reading, if only for the different names given to the @ symbol around the world - it's known as a "monkey's tail" in South Africa, or "little monkey's testicle" in Holland, for example. Unfortunately, the newspaper has a policy against deep linking to its site. Instead, go to www.timesonline.co.uk and search for "Tomlinson". The story is dated 13th December 2003.