Ampersand

February 24, 2025

Greetings from the nolo sapient,

This morning I will share with you a fascinating fact that may change your day.  But first, allow me to digress. (Which is now the earliest I have digressed in an essay)

When I was in high school, I took a typing class. This will immediately alert you that I grew up in another century.  I can’t remember why I took the class, but I have a feeling it was to avoid learning anything that would make my brain hurt.  I vaguely recall some guidance counselor with his head in his hands, saying “I give up.  You choose something.”

I remember very little from the class other than I was the only guy there, and that at different times we were instructed to find a key on the typewriter and press it repeatedly so we would memorize its place, and we could easily find it when we needed to type it.  You know, later, when we started our career as professional typists.

Anyway, this is when I was introduced to the ‘And Sign’, that squiggly mark on the keyboard that looks like a mistake.

Eventually I could type well enough that I could type the word ‘and’ faster than I could search for the ‘And Sign’ and press the clunky shift button to access it on the typewriter.  At some point I learned to ignore virtually all of the characters that required the shift button.  (Other than the parentheses, which we will discuss in another digression)

Side note: in this era we were still required to do certain assignments by writing on paper using cursive, which we called ‘penmanship’ (except when using a pencil, when it was ‘handwriting’, which is literally and literally a more descriptive term).  Despite the efforts of several professional teachers, some of whom changed careers after meeting me, I failed to adopt the appropriate techniques of cursive. So, when I wrote any word that began with a capital ‘S’, including my name, the ‘S’ looked like the ‘And Sign’, which meant my name appeared to be David &cott &mith.  Many people thought I was part of a law firm.

Later in life, long after I left the educational system designed to prepare me for important things, I learned that the ‘And Sign’ was actually called an ‘ampersand’.  I believe it was a conversation where I was trying to impress a girl with my sense of humor:

Me: …so, it turns out I can type the word ‘and’ faster than I can hit the ‘And Sign’.

Her: You know that’s called an ampersand, don’t you?  Were you born in a barn?

Me: The ‘And Sign’ is an ampersand?  What else didn’t they tell me in high school?

Her: Could you stop talking? I’m trying to clean your teeth.

Most Americans only use the ampersand when they are trying to disguise a curse word, which is also a quaint tradition from another century.  So when writing a disagreeable swear word it might appear as “#@&*!’ which is also my password to my AOL account.

The other purpose for the ampersand was for 70’s TV shows like ‘Starsky & Hutch’ or ‘Laverne & Shirley’, but strangely, not ‘Sanford and Son’, which eschewed the logogram for the conjunction.  Ha ha, how often have we all wanted to do that?

(Occasionally I will think of random things to include in my writing that most people would find irrelevant, like the definition of ‘eschewed’ for example, (or e.g.), which is why I include them in parentheses.  It may be inappropriate, or wrong, in other words, (or i.e.)  to do that, but so far my dental hygienist hasn’t corrected me.)

In the decades since I learned what an ampersand was, I never once considered why the word was invented or where the word came from.  It goes without saying (but I’m saying it anyway) that my stilted curiosity didn’t serve me well in high school, and not much better in the fifty years since then.  Regardless, in the pursuit of truth, and while looking up the something about the constitution so I could argue with a stranger on social media, I discovered where ampersand came from.

The origin is in Latin, where the word for ‘and’ was ‘et’ which when written by a student with poor penmanship, looks like &.  (See the connection?)  Regardless, the phrase describing the use of the word was ‘and per se and’ which is already giving me a headache.  Eventually it was smushed into the word we know today.

It turns out that the ampersand was once the 27th letter of the alphabet. It was dropped in the late 1800’s because it was ruining the ending of the ABC song.  (Some of that last sentence may be made up.)

And that’s the fascinating fact that may change your day.  Like now that you’ve read this far you might be saying, “Well, I’ll never get that four minutes back.”  Isn’t education fun?

Hope this finds you older & wiser,

David

Copyright © 2025 David Smith