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An ampersand (&) is a logogram for the word and. It is a ligature of the letters in "et," which is Latin for and. The symbol's origin is apparent in the example shown below on the right; the example on the left, now more common, is a later development. The name derives from the phrase "and per se and;" that is, "the symbol for and by itself means and." The Scottish name for it is epershand; that is, "et per se and." This name more clearly shows its origin in the Latin et.
History
The "roman" ampersand on the left is stylised, but the "italic" one on the right is clearly similar to 'et'.
The ampersand symbol has been found on ancient Roman sources dating to the first century AD. During this period the symbol was a boxy-looking ligature of the capital letters E T. Over time the figure became more curved and flowing, until it came to resemble something like the figure on the right, often called the "italic" ampersand.
By the eighth century AD, Western calligraphy was well developed, particularly in a form called "Carolingian miniscule." The calligraphers made extensive use of the ampersand because by condensing a word into a single character, their work became a little easier. During this time the even more condensed ampersand, shown on the left, was developed. It is often called the "roman" ampersand.
After the advent of printing in Europe in 1455, printers made extensive use of both the italic and roman ampersands. Every new typeface and font has included its own style of &. Since the ampersand's roots go back to Roman times, many languages that use a variation of the Latin alphabet make use of it.
Historically, & was regarded as the 27th letter of the English alphabet. Until recent times the alphabets used by children terminated not with Z but with & or related typographic symbols. George Eliot refers to this when she has Jacob Storey say, "He thought it (Z) had only been put to finish off th' alphabet like; though ampusand would ha' done as well, for what he could see."
Usage
In common usage, the symbol & is used interchangeably with the word and; the distinction between them is mostly aesthetic. However, in film credits for story, screenplay, etc., & indicates a closer collaboration than and. In formal writing it is more acceptable to avoid the symbol in the main body of the text; most writers simply write out the word and.
In everyday handwriting, the ampersand is sometimes simplified to a curvy E superimposed by a vertical line, like a $ sign. Sometimes it is nothing more than a + (plus sign) with a loop; the loop is the remnant of a lowercase e.
The phrase et cetera ("and so forth") can be abbreviated &c. This is because the ampersand originally stood for the Latin et.
The ampersand represents a vowel in the orthography for the Marshallese language.
Computing
The ampersand corresponds to Unicode and ASCII character 38, or hexadecimal 0x0026. On many U.S. computer keyboards, the ampersand is found above the 7.
In some computer programming languages, the & sign is used to indicate logical and.
Many computer languages with syntax derived from C differentiate between:
In the BASIC programming language the & is used in two ways. It is often used to indicate a variable is of type long, or 32 bits in length. It is also used between two strings (variables or constants) to concatenate them.
When found at the end of a Unix shell command line, the ampersand indicates that the indicated command is to
be processed in the background.
External link
"The Ampersand" (http://store.adobe.com/type/topics/theampersand.html), an article written for Adobe Systems by Max Caflisch, a significant source for this article.
de:& fr:Esperluette ja:アンパサンド sv:Et-tecken pl:et
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