I am trying to understand the use of the arroba. Is this mark used more commonly in some countries than others?
I saw a threatening letter in which the final thing written was:
@advertencia
What does this mean?
1 Answer
Nowadays it is quite typical to use some kind of rare-but-familiar character to emphasize *what goes next (see?).
Arroba has become quite successful among Spanish speaking people to mark both genders. Hopefully we will get rid of these soon, but it is still quite typical to see bienvenid@s, amig@s and similar instead of the traditional bienvenidos/as, amigos/as. As always, new fancy characters get adopted fast because people like to use them and tweak their common usage.
In this case, I do believe that it was used just as a character to express attention, while it could also be a bad interpretation of the @ in comments, Twitter, etc.
All in all, this is not normative and you just have to see them as a way to catch your attention... in another way.
Compare these two:
Rogamos no dejen la basura en el rellano.
Rogamos no dejen la basura en el rellano. @advertencia
To me, the second one sounds more furious and I would take it more seriously.
answered Nov 15, 2016 at 10:45
!advertenciaor+advertencia. I have never seen it in Spain.