The web is daunting and sometimes it feels like everyone knows the lingo but you. Along my travels I have solved a few mysteries and found the places to go for answers when a new mystery finds me.

To pass on the love I am starting a new series on Sixth & Elm for the questions everyone else seems to take for granted and you are too intimidated to ask. No question is too simple since, really, this stuff isn’t intuitive and you just have to learn by experience. Feel free to leave new questions in the comments or contact me directly if you want to remain anonymous (I won’t put your name, so no worries about looking “silly”).

The question in this series is from a question asked of me via the contact form on this site, and I thank you for asking it.

1. Why do people not put the “@” in their email address when listing it on a website? For example: sixthandelm(AT)gmail.com or sixthandelm(AT)gmail(DOT)com.

“Bots,” or computer-automated searchers can scan webpages for things that look like email addresses (usually looking for the “@” that gives an email away) to add to spam lists so to be safe many webpage authors will code their emails so that people can understand it, but computers looking for addresses to spam cannot. Another solution is to make their email address into a picture in photoshop so that bots scanning text only cannot read it. I have no idea which pages are safe or when it is okay to use an email address in the correct form so I just use the (AT) format for everything, including listing my email on profiles for facebook, flickr or etsy.