The ampersand is my favorite punctuation mark.
From Sarah France.
Technically, it’s a logogram, which is a written symbol that stands for a complete word or phrase. The ampersand represents the word and.
From Swiss Miss.
Its shape has evolved in different directions over time, but it was originally printed as a ligature of the letters in the Latin word for and: the capital E and the lowercase t.
From Andrew Young.
In a brief biography of their “middle name,” typography designers Hoefler & Frere-Jones write, “the ampersand is considerably older than many of the letters that we use today . . . one appears in Pompeiian graffiti, establishing the symbol at least as far back as A.D. 79.”
From otherthings.
I think what I like most is that the ampersand often resembles a capital letter E. As in Emily.
July 9, 2008 at 11:00 AM
You’re so artsy ‘&’ erudite!