I never noticed that! How interesting. Strangely, in the font that displays in my reply box (i.e.*, the box I’m typing this into), it looks like the ampersand that’s above the number 7 on my keyboard, approximately like “8x” smooshed together. When the post is published, it’s in the different font that makes it look like a ligatured “Et.”
Aioua, I’ve thought “&c.” was neat ever since I came across it in some 18th century novels in undergrad.
*And there’s some more Latin!
No, I meant “appersat”. Just as ampersand comes from generations of British children reciting
a per se a
b per se b
…
z per se z
& per se and (pronounced “and per se and”
(don’t ask) and the last gradually ground down to ampersand with the “nd” changing to “mp” under the usual rules of English phonetics, there was an alternate universe in which a quantum indeterminacy resulted in that arrow that killed Harold by hitting him the eye, sticking in nose instead and he became known as Harold Fletchnose. Another consequence of this change was that a 28th line was added to the above:
@ per se at (pronounced “at per se at”)
and the same phonetic change rendered it as appersat.
The irony is that, if the browser doesn’t know how to display that character, it probably shows up as a question mark. Which means that it’s almost right.
Ampersat.
And then there was the typist who asked her new boss, “How do you get the circle around that a?”
Wow; somebody else calls it that? AFAIK, I introduced “appersat” to the SDMB two years ago:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6023074&postcount=15
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6240618&postcount=9
I guess we are obliged to accept this. After all, you are the Galaxy’s foremost expert on Psycho History, and that is definitely a psycho sort of history! 
Back in the 60s and early 70s I worked a lot with Burroughs computers. Any punch card (anyone remember those) which contained commands contained an @ sign in column one. Burroughs referred to this as a ‘commercial at’. I have no idea where this came from, but that is what I’ve always called it.
Bob
Whatever they’re called, they sure are handy:
–Grab the h& hold onto your h@@@, we’re going on a picnic!
–You would be an * it. Let me ex#: it is so cold my sister/// froze together and she cannot see.
–Okay. We will wait until bas~.
When I was a wee lad, back in the 70s, I asked my mother what that symbol was called, sitting there above the “2” on her typewriter. She called it the “at” symbol.
I assume she was told what it was when she was learning typing as a teenager, which would’ve been the 50s.
Just for the record, I posted a much longer version of this on a newsgroup (probably sci.math) about 20 years ago. I looked to see if I had kept a copy, but I don’t have much from 20 years ago. What I do remember is that it started, “The paratime police have given me permission to reveal this secret.”
I took my first computer class a long time ago. These days we call it a star, but she called it an asterick. It annoyed me, so I went to her during a break to give her a way to remember how to say it. “I regret that I have but one asterisk for my country.”
It was a pretty good joke, but an arrogant thing for a student to tell his teacher. I wish I hadn’t done it.
Well, my place in history is diminished from “created” to “independently proposed 15 years later”; oh well. Same thing happened to me with Sturgeon’s Law.
Is this the post?