What Is an Ampersand Symbol and How Is it Used

An ampersand is a symbol () representing the word and. The ampersand was included in the Old English alphabet, and the term is an alteration of and per se and. The symbol is a combination (or ligature) of the letters in et, Latin for and. In formal writing, the ampersand is primarily used in the names of companies, such as Johnson Johnson. Ampersands sometimes also appear in formulas, computer code, and abridged or tabular matter.   Well-Known Brands and Titles That Use an Ampersand Abercrombie FitchA.G. Edwards SonsAngels Demons (novel and film)ATTBarnes NobleBausch LombBed Bath BeyondBen Jerrys Homemade Ice CreamThe Bill Melinda Gates FoundationBlack DeckerBoys Girls Clubs of AmericaBurt AssociatesThe College of William MaryDun BradstreetEconOffice Products SuppliesErnst YoungGould LambHudson KeyseImagine Me You (film)John Wiley SonsLitle Co.Marley Me (novel and film)Merck Co.Mothers Others for Clean AirProcter GambleSaatchi SaatchiSimon SchusterStandard PoorsStarwood Hotels Resorts WorldwideTurner Hooch (film) Reciting the Alphabet The name ampersand...comes from the practice once common in schools of reciting all 26 letters of the alphabet plus the sign, pronounced and, which was considered part of the alphabet, at least for learning purposes. Any letter that could also be used as a word in itself (A, I, and, at one point, O) was preceded in the recitation by the Latin phrase per se (by itself) to draw the students attention to that fact. Thus the end of this daily ritual would go: X, Y, Z and per se and. This last phrase was routinely slurred to ampersand by children rightly bored to tears, and the term crept into common English usage by around 1837.—Evan Morris Plus Signs and Ampersands The plus sign [] is used by sign painters and graphic artists who probably do not know how to handle the ampersand. They use an improper simplification. Trademarks, too, should not use the plus sign instead of the ampersand. People who do not wish to paint or draw an ampersand should not attempt lettering.—Jan Tschichold The Ampersand Urban Legend Because people like to make up urban legends based on everything including stodgy old typographical marks, theres a vicious rumor floating around that French physicist and mathematician  Andrà ©-Marie Ampà ¨re used the mark so much that it eventually got called Amperes and. Dont believe it for a second. In the end, were left with a pretty little symbol that has more than a few variants.—Jamie Frater The Lighter Side of Ampersands... The symbol is a favorite of law and architecture firms, and is invaluable in parsing screenplay credits...A good rule of thumb is that the more ampersands in the credits, the crummier the movie.—Ben Yagoda Sources Morris, Evan. Et All O Youse. The Word Detective. May 20, 2003Tschichold, Jan. Treasury of Alphabets and Lettering: A Source Book of the Best Letter Forms. W.W. Norton Co. 1995Frater, Jamie. Listverse.coms Epic Book of Mind-Boggling Lists. Ulysses Press. 2014Yagoda, Ben. When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It. Broadway Books. 2007