The Ampersand Appreciation Society

[thinglie]

& . Even the default font on phpBB has an interesting, if not entirely pretty, ampersand. (On Windows at least)

Some of my favourite ampersands are those in Donald Knuth's Computer Modern fonts:

Mmm. Pretty swirls. I should mention that I'm in love with Computer Modern anyway.

CMAmp.png (4.8 KiB) Viewed 2916 times

Articles on ampersands:

http://www.typography.com/ask/showBlog.php?blogID=98
Hoefler & Frere-Jones type foundry on their middle name.

http://www.andymangold.com/ampersand-book/
Every ampersand lover wishes that this was in print.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand
Wikipedia discourses on the history of the &.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/warh.htm
Article from Michael Quinion commenting on the ampersand.

http://www.marcjohns.com/blog/2009/03/m ... rsand.html
MUST HAVE: Deluxe carrying case for an ampersand.

[Bobber]

My favorites are the ones where you can easily discern between the e and t - it shows something about the etymology instead of just being some arbitrary wiggly shape.

[fwlbg]

I love ampers&s ampersands/"&", especially in the font Courier New, where they share the width of all other characters.

[6453893]

So many fonts have such terrible ampersands. Its really an afterthought to so many designers. I made some giant display versions of some of the better designs I have.

Ampersands

[thinglie]

What's that one on the far right? Looks swirly and nice.

[Silas]

My favorites are the ones where you can easily discern between the e and t - it shows something about the etymology instead of just being some arbitrary wiggly shape.

Really? I like wiggly ones, the sort Helvetica uses. If you look closely enough, you can see the Et (you've gotta want it, but it's there), but it doesn't look like you're just throwing barely-disguised Latin into your sentence- I'm looking at a font called Trebuchet MS, where the ampersand is essentially just a ligature.

[6453893]

What's that one on the far right? Looks swirly and nice.

Zapfino

[Dibley]

I love Zapfino... That man is my hero.

[smw543]

My favorites are the ones where you can easily discern between the e and t - it shows something about the etymology instead of just being some arbitrary wiggly shape.

I'm inclined to agree, but in an odd contradiction, I don't like it when people write "&c." instead of "etc." Not sure why...

Also, I never write out the word "and". I recall a high school English teacher getting pissed off at me for using ampersands in handwritten assignments.

[Dibley]

Why? Did he think they only came about with the invention of the typewriter?

[Joeldi]

None of my teachers permitted ampersands in typed or written work, at least in early grades. I never found out if teacher's in year 11 and 12 would've have minded, because I never got in to the habit. Though I've never really used them (outside of programming), I still appreciate them. &&&&&

[Kizyr]

So, how do people handwrite their ampersands?
I'm not sure how or why, but I got into the habit of writing mine like a 3 with a vertical line:

kf-ampersand.jpg (1.88 KiB) Viewed 2677 times

Although visually, I still prefer the regular & on a keyboard / in Arial font. KF

[smw543]

Because it's important (and I'm looking for excuses not to get any work done):

I made this in Paint because I don't have one of those fancy scanner doodads.

Scott's ampersand.JPG (1.42 KiB) Viewed 2609 times

[Velifer]

I like any one that hints at the "et."

Michael Quinion wrote a bit about & in his newsletter: http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/warh.htm

"It was usual in the eighteenth century to have children end their recital of the letters of the alphabet with &, because it was so common." Now the last letter of the alphabet would be @.

[gmalivuk]

I'm not sure how or why, but I got into the habit of writing mine like a 3 with a vertical line

It would make more sense to be the mirror image of that, which is probably the version on which you originally based your own ampersand. (Because reversing the 3 makes it look like an E. But probably you hadn't seen E written that way when you first saw an ampersand written that way, so you mentally categorized it as being 3-like.)

[Kizyr]

I'm not sure how or why, but I got into the habit of writing mine like a 3 with a vertical line

It would make more sense to be the mirror image of that, which is probably the version on which you originally based your own ampersand. (Because reversing the 3 makes it look like an E. But probably you hadn't seen E written that way when you first saw an ampersand written that way, so you mentally categorized it as being 3-like.)

Now that I think about it, that sounds about right... I have to search pretty far back in my memory, but it was probably 3rd grade. In 1st-2nd grades, I wrote like I saw print--including the lowercase "a" and ampersands. In 3rd grade I finally started trying to figure out how to write quickly and comfortably--I saw some people writing & as an "Et" (looking like E with a vertical bar), found it more comfortable to write it like a 3 with a vertical bar, and just kept that habit since.

Huh... surprised that came back to me so quickly. KF

[gmalivuk]

Huh... surprised that came back to me so quickly. KF

Well, to be fair, human beings are very good at making up things and giving them the patina of real memories. Especially if it's a logical-sounding explanation for something.

(Another example is in the annoying words thread, when people swear up and down that they'd never heard a word before time T. Which is a claim I will never believe unless that was the first time they were in a new country or it can be demonstrated objectively that the word was coined at or very shortly before time T.)

[Velifer]

So the history I've heard is that the and per se and was made by ligature of E and T. But in Latin, words were abbreviated with a slash (the Rx ligature for recipio survives, as does the c/ ligature for cum in medical abbreviations). What are the chances that the ampersand is actually E/ ? Is there any real way to know?

[Kizyr]

Huh... surprised that came back to me so quickly. KF

Well, to be fair, human beings are very good at making up things and giving them the patina of real memories. Especially if it's a logical-sounding explanation for something.

Fair enough! While I grant that possibility, I do distinctly remember practicing several different ways of writing & until I found one that felt the easiest. I remember people mistaking it for a B rather often, before I put some effort into improving my handwriting. KF

[gmalivuk]

What are the chances that the ampersand is actually E/ ? Is there any real way to know?

Well considering the number of different forms the ampersand has, probably one or more of them are from Et, and one or more of the others are from E/.

The real way to know would be to look at old written samples to see how it was written back when it was still very consciously seen as a Latin abbreviation.

[Bobber]

I have been looking for handwritten Latin texts here, but have yet to find anything that I can identify as & or e/.

[Velifer]

I have been looking for handwritten Latin texts here, but have yet to find anything that I can identify as & or e/.

Knowing I piqued someone's curiosity enough to have them go looking makes me feel all warm and & fuzzy.

[thinglie]

ABCDEFGHIJLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ&@.

Perhaps we do have a 28-letter alphabet after all...

[Velifer]

I might have to bite the • and say I was wrong. While I'd like to join the ♣, I don't see too many people using the @ symbol the same way we use &, so my initial thought fell a bit ♭. We use % and currency symbols more widely, perhaps we should make them an ∫ part of the alphabet first.

Somebody's gonna put a † in my eye for this post.

Ceci n'est pas une |.
(But that's what I learned it was called! Vertical bar? How dull.)

[thinglie]

I might have to bite the • and say I was wrong. While I'd like to join the ♣, I don't see too many people using the @ symbol the same way we use &, so my initial thought fell a bit ♭. We use % and currency symbols more widely, perhaps we should make them an ∫ part of the alphabet first.

Somebody's gonna put a † in my eye for this post.

Ceci n'est pas une |.
(But that's what I learned it was called! Vertical bar? How dull.)

For those without Unicode:

I might have to bite the bullet and say I was wrong. While I'd like to join the club, I don't see too many people using the @ symbol the same way we use &, so my initial thought fell a bit flat. We use % and currency symbols more widely, perhaps we should make them an integral part of the alphabet first.

Somebody's gonna put a dagger in my eye for this post.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
(But that's what I learned it was called! Vertical bar? How dull.)

[smw543]

an new part

∫=integral. Shame on you for posting in the linguistics board without proper knowledge of calculus.

Also, isn't "pipe" the French word for "pipe" (pronounced differently)? Why is that last part in French?

[quintopia]

Why is that last part in French?

He's quoting Magritte.

[jaap]

an new part

∫=integral. Shame on you for posting in the linguistics board without proper knowledge of calculus.

Somebody's gonna put a dart in my eye for this post.

Also † = dagger, not dart.

Also, isn't "pipe" the French word for "pipe" (pronounced differently)? Why is that last part in French?

This is why.

Edit: Ninja'd again...

[smw543]

I lose the internet? Again? Bah. (For the record, † is also commonly referred to as a cross because it looks like one and it originates with the Church.)

[gmalivuk]

For those without Unicode

Pretty sure all of that was basic ASCII...

[thinglie]

For those without Unicode

Pretty sure all of that was basic ASCII...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ASCII_full.svg

Those are the only printing characters in ASCII.

[gmalivuk]

huh, guess i was thinking of an 8-bit character set.

[Bobber]

I DID IT!
I found a cross between "et" and "&" in an old document!

old etc.JPG (15.95 KiB) Viewed 2035 times

This is from a preface so The True and Faithful Relations by John Dee, which was written in 1659 by some guy. The yellow marker is mine.

The PDF can be found here, and it's an interesting lead.

Yeah yeah, it's not handwritten, but it is relevant nonetheless!

[thinglie]

That's actually quite interesting. You can tell the "et" is there very clearly, more clearly even than in today's ampersands of similar design. For example, look at the second from the left in that image posted by 6453893. It's a very similar style, but because of the decoration of the "e," you couldn't really tell what it said without looking for it.

[fimzo]

Did "&/et" come to represent "and" due to the usage of another language, French for example? I guess I could just look it up, but I thought I'd mention it here. Also, "ampersand" is a neat name, but who came up with it?
&&&Et&

[tendays]

ABCDEFGHIJLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ&@.

Perhaps we do have a 28-letter alphabet after all...

But yours only has twenty-seven letters...

EDIT to add:

Did "&/et" come to represent "and" due to the usage of another language, French for example? I guess I could just look it up, but I thought I'd mention it here. Also, "ampersand" is a neat name, but who came up with it?
&&&Et&

"Et" means "and" in Latin. It happened to survive unchanged until today in French.
The ampersand is apparently (according to Wikipedia) called "Esperluette" in French. That's also a neat looking word! Although I've never heard it before. One of my (French-speaking) teachers would call it "et commercial" i.e. "commercial and", maybe because in French it's mostly used in company or restaurant names that want to look hip or modern or something.

[Foremorrow]

My favorites are the ones where you can easily discern between the e and t - it shows something about the etymology instead of just being some arbitrary wiggly shape.

Yes I agree. My favourite form of ampersand is represented as such:

None of my teachers permitted ampersands in typed or written work, at least in early grades. I never found out if teacher's in year 11 and 12 would've have minded, because I never got in to the habit. Though I've never really used them (outside of programming), I still appreciate them. &&&&&

I remember in 10th Grade my teacher instructed me that it was incorrect to use ampersands in writings such as stories, they were meant only for titles and such.

[BlackSails]

I just use a plus sign for "and"

[EstLladon]

Did "&/et" come to represent "and" due to the usage of another language, French for example? I guess I could just look it up, but I thought I'd mention it here. Also, "ampersand" is a neat name, but who came up with it?
&&&Et&

I´ve heard the story goes something like this: http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/112/

[GhostWolfe]

kf-ampersand.jpg

My handwritten & is almost the exact mirror image of that, though my handwriting is a little more rounded.

Side note: I also draw my "E" curly like a reversed 3.

/angell