Apr 17, 2008
A History of the Ampersand!
The term ampersand, as Geoffrey Glaister writes in his “Glossary of the Book,” is a corruption of and (&) per se and, which literally means “(the character) & by itself (is the word) and.”
The symbol & is derived from the ligature of ET or et, which is the Latin word for “and.”One of the first examples of an ampersand appears on a piece of papyrus from about 45 A.D. Written in the style of early Roman capital cursive (typical of the handwriting of the time), it shows the ligature ET. A sample of Pompeian graffiti from 79 A.D. (fig. 1) also shows a combination of the capitals E and T, and is again written in early Roman script.
Adobe - Fonts : Type topics: The ampersand
2 Comments, Comment or Ping
poshdeluxe
i can’t see the word “ampersand” and not think of the monkey from “y: the last man.” which isn’t a bad thing.
Apr 18th, 2008
Josh Duty
whenever i doodle, i draw ampersands over and over. once, you saw me doing this and said something like, “what’s with the ampersands?” and i go, “what’s an amersand?”
Apr 18th, 2008
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