An ampersand (&), also commonly called an "and sign" is a logogram representing the conjunction "and." The symbol is a ligature of the letters in et, Latin for "and." Its origin is apparent in the second example in the image to the left below; the first example, now more common, is a later development. Egyptian hieroglyphs, which have their origins as logograms. ... In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more letterforms are written or printed as a unit. ... // Et (or et or &) is Latin and French for and. Et, et and ET may also refer to: ET, the country code for Ethiopia et, the Internet country code top-level domain for Ethiopia et, ISO 639 alpha-2 language code for Estonian ET, Ethiopian Airlines, IATA airline designator Eiffel... For other uses, see Latin (disambiguation). ...

Name

The word ampersand is a corruption of the phrase "and per se and", meaning "and [the symbol which] by itself [is] and".^[1] The Scots and Scottish English name for & is epershand, derived from "et per se and", with the same meaning. Per se is a latin phrase used in english arguments. ... This article is about the Anglic language of Scotland. ... Scottish English is usually taken to mean the standard form of the English language used in Scotland, often termed Scottish Standard English. ...

There is a common rumour that the word comes from an inventor named Linus Amper, hence 'Amper's And' [1].

History

Ampersand evolution.

The roman ampersand at left is stylized, but the italic one at right reveals its origin in the Latin word et.

Et ligature in Insular script.

The ampersand symbol has been found on ancient Roman sources dating to the first century A.D. Marcus Tullius Tiro, Cicero's secretary of 36 years, is credited as its inventor.^[2] During this period the symbol was a boxy-looking ligature of the capital letters E and T. Over time the figure became more curved and flowing, until it came to resemble something like the figure above on the right, often called the "italic" ampersand. Image File history File links Ampersand_Evolution. ... Image File history File links Ampersand_Evolution. ... Image File history File links Ampersand. ... Image File history File links Ampersand. ... Image File history File links Etlig. ... The beginning of the Gospel of Mark from the Book of Durrow. ... For other uses, see Roman Empire (disambiguation). ... Marcus Tullius Tiro (c. ... For other uses, see Cicero (disambiguation). ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Ligature (palaeography). ... For other uses, see E (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see T (disambiguation). ...

By the eighth century AD, Western calligraphy was well developed, particularly in forms such as Uncial, Insular script, and Carolingian minuscule. The calligraphers made extensive use of the ampersand because the condensation of a word into a single character made their work easier. During this time the even more condensed ampersand, shown above on the left, was developed. It is often called the "Roman" ampersand. Contemporary Western Calligraphy. ... The Book of Kells, c. ... The beginning of the Gospel of Mark from the Book of Durrow. ... Example from 10th century manuscript Carolingian or Caroline minuscule is a script developed as a writing standard in Europe so that the Roman alphabet could be easily recognized by the small literate class from one region to another. ...

The ampersand often appeared as a letter at the end of the Latin alphabet, as for example in Byrhtferð's list of letters from 1011.^[3] Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz redirects here. ...

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. For other uses, see Print. ... “Font” redirects here. ... “Font” redirects here. ... Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz redirects here. ...

Historically, & was regarded as the 27th letter of the English alphabet.^{[citation needed]} Until recent times the alphabets used by children terminated not with Z but with & or related typographic symbols.^{[citation needed]} This may be where the term 'Ampersand' originated, as children reciting the alphabet ended not with "and Z", but instead with "and per se and". 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." The modern English alphabet consists of the 26 letters[1] of the Latin alphabet: The exact shape of printed letters varies depending on the typeface. ... Look up Z, z in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Mary Ann (Marian) Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist. ...

Writing the ampersand

A simplified, handwritten ampersand.

The conventional ampersand can be easily drawn by first making the cross stroke a bit farther to the right than where a common letter begins, shifting the pen to the center of this stroke, and then following the loop around. Image File history File links Ampersand-handwriting-2. ... Image File history File links Ampersand-handwriting-2. ...

In everyday handwriting, the ampersand is sometimes simplified to a backwards 3 superimposed by a vertical line, like a $ sign, this too seems to be a contraction of the Latin et. Sometimes it appears as nothing more than a "+" sign, or a t with a loop (a remnant of a lowercase e). This type of ampersand may actually be a rendering of the "+" sign, or of the Tironian "et". These forms are all generally acceptable and recognized, but some might view them as sloppy or casual. Penmanship is the art of writing clearly and quickly. ... $, the dollar sign, is primarily used to represent currencies: Many different dollars Many different pesos Different escudos The Brazilian real The Tongan paanga The Nicaraguan córdoba $ may also be: $ (film), also known as Dollars A sigil (computer programming) Category: ... Tironian et, U+204A ⁊. Tironian notes () is a system of shorthand said to have been invented by Ciceros scribe Marcus Tullius Tiro. ...

Despite the symbol's declining use, it can still be useful when space is limited. Perhaps due to its increasing rarity, the ampersand is sometimes rendered incorrectly when drawn by hand. The most common error is to render the symbol backwards. Another mistake that is sometimes made is to draw it as a treble clef from musical notation. A clef (French for key) is a symbol used in musical notation that assigns notes to lines and spaces on the musical staff. ...

Usage

The main surviving use of the ampersand is in the formal names of businesses (especially firms and partnerships, particularly law firms, architectural firms, and stockbroker firms (the names of these also nearly always omit the serial comma). The term company may refer to a separate legal entity, as in English law, or may simply refer to a business, as is the common use in the United States. ... A partnership is a type of business entity in which partners share with each other the profits or losses of the business undertaking in which all have invested. ... A law firm is a business entity formed by one or more lawyers to engage in the practice of law. ... A 1940s architectural office. ... A Stock broker sells or buys stock on behalf of a customer. ... The serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma or Harvard comma) is the comma used immediately before a grammatical conjunction (nearly always and or or; sometimes nor) that precedes the last item in a list of three or more items. ...

With the growth of mobile phone usage and text messaging, the ampersand is gaining new use in SMS language both as a representation for the word "and" and in rebus form, such as "b&" in place of the word "banned".^[4] SMS arrival notification on a Siemens phone Text messaging, or texting is the common term for the sending of short (160 characters or fewer) text messages, using the Short Message Service, from mobile phones. ... txt redirects here. ... Rebus Principle (Linguistics) is using the existing symbols, such as pictograms, purely for their sounds regardless of their meaning, to represent new words. ...

The ampersand is also often used when addressing an envelope to a couple: "Mr. & Mrs. Jones" or "John & Silvia".

The ampersand is also used for book and movie titles, such as Harry & Tonto, as well, and in some other proper names. In these cases, & is interchangeable 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 screenplays, for example, two authors joined with & collaborated on the script, while two authors joined with and worked on the script at different times and may not have consulted each other at all.^[5] This article is about the philosophical issues relating to a certain class of nominative words. ... This article is about motion pictures. ... Sample from a screenplay, showing dialogue and action descriptions. ...

In APA style the ampersand is used when citing sources in text such as (Jones & Jones, 2005). Further information: MLA Style Manual American Psychological Association (APA) style is a widely-accepted style of documentation for APA style specifies the names and order of headings, formatting and organization of citations and references, and the arrangement of tables, figures, footnotes, and appendices, as well as other manuscript and documentation...

The phrase et cetera ("and so forth"), usually written as 'etc.' can be abbreviated &c representing the combination et + c(etera). This usage is frequently seen in writings of the 18th and 19th centuries, but is rare in modern usage. The &c (et ceterarum, [Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland] and of others) shows that Oliver Cromwell did not renounce the English claims on France. ...

The ampersand as a letter

The ampersand represents a vowel in the orthography for the Marshallese language. The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. ... The Marshallese language (Marshallese: or  ) or is a Malayo-Polynesian language of the Marshall Islands. ...

Computing

In the twentieth century, following the development of formal logic, the ampersand became a commonly used logical notation for the binary operator or sentential connective AND. This usage was adopted in computing. Logic (from ancient Greek λόγος (logos), meaning reason) is the study of arguments. ... In mathematics, a binary operation, or binary operator, is a calculation involving two input quantities and one kind of a specific operation. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... AND Logic Gate In logic and mathematics, logical conjunction (usual symbol and) is a two-place logical operation that results in a value of true if both of its operands are true, otherwise a value of false. ...

Programming languages

There are two common uses for the "&" symbol as a binary operator in programming languages: as the logical AND operator, and as the string or array concatenation operator. There are also various idiosyncratic uses of & by various languages. Programming languages generally have a set of operators that are similar to operators in mathematics: they are somehow special functions. ... A programming language is an artificial language that can be used to control the behavior of a machine, particularly a computer. ... AND Logic Gate In logic and mathematics, logical conjunction (usual symbol and) is a two-place logical operation that results in a value of true if both of its operands are true, otherwise a value of false. ... In various branches of mathematics and computer science, strings are sequences of various simple objects (symbols, tokens, characters, etc. ...

Many languages with syntax derived from C differentiate between: C is a general-purpose, block structured, procedural, imperative computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system. ...

• & for bitwise AND, which also functions as the non-short-circuit logical AND since C represents false/true as zero/nonzero integers
• && for short-circuit logical AND

In C and C++, "&" is also used as a unary prefix operator, denoting the address in memory of the argument, e.g. &x, &func, &a[3]. (This is called "referencing".) In C++, unary prefix & in a formal parameter of a function denotes pass-by-reference. In computer programming, a bitwise operation operates on one or two bit patterns or binary numerals at the level of their individual bits. ... In computer programming, lazy evaluation is a concept that attempts to minimize the work the computer has to do. ... AND Logic Gate In logic and mathematics, logical conjunction (usual symbol and) is a two-place logical operation that results in a value of true if both of its operands are true, otherwise a value of false. ... C is a general-purpose, block structured, procedural, imperative computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system. ... C++ (pronounced see plus plus, IPA: ) is a general-purpose programming language with high-level and low-level capabilities. ... In computer science, a memory address is a unique identifier for a memory location at which a CPU or other device can store a piece of data for later retrieval. ... This article is about a general notion of reference in computing. ... C++ (pronounced see plus plus, IPA: ) is a general-purpose programming language with high-level and low-level capabilities. ... In computer programming, a parameter is a variable which takes on the meaning of a corresponding argument passed in a call to a subroutine. ... In computer science, a subroutine (function, procedure, or subprogram) is a sequence of code which performs a specific task, as part of a larger program, and is grouped as one, or more, statement blocks; such code is sometimes collected into software libraries. ... In the C++ programming language, a reference is a simple reference datatype that is less powerful but safer than the pointer type inherited from C, which is a reference in the general sense but not in the sense used by C++. // Syntax and terminology The declaration of the form <Type...

Ampersand is the string concatenation operator in Ada and many BASIC dialects. In Ada, it applies to all one-dimensional arrays, not just strings. In computer programming and formal language theory, (and other branches of mathematics), a string is an ordered sequence of symbols. ... Concatenation is a standard operation in computer programming languages (a subset of formal language theory). ... Ada is a structured, statically typed, imperative, and object-oriented high-level computer programming language. ... BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of high-level programming languages. ...

In some BASIC dialects, unary suffix & denotes a variable is of type long, or 32 bits in length. In BBC BASIC, unary prefix ampersand marks an integer literal written in hexadecimal. BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of high-level programming languages. ... This article is about the unit of information. ... BBC BASIC was developed in 1981 as a native programming language for the MOS Technology 6502 based Acorn BBC Micro home/personal computer, mainly by Roger Wilson. ... In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal, base-16, or simply hex, is a numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16, usually written using the symbols 0–9 and A–F, or a–f. ...

In MySQL the '&' has dual roles. As a logical AND in addition it serves a bitwise operator of an intersection between elements. MySQL (pronounced (IPA) , my S-Q-L[1]) is a multithreaded, multi-user SQL database management system (DBMS)[2] which has, according to MySQL AB, more than 10 million installations. ...

When found at the end of a Unix shell command, the ampersand indicates that the indicated command is to be processed in the background. Two ampersands means that the next command should only be evaluated if the current one exits with a zero status. Screenshot of a sample Bash session, taken on Gentoo Linux. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

In SGML, XML, and HTML, the ampersand is used to introduce an SGML entity. The HTML and XML encoding for the ampersand character is the entity '&amp;'.^[6] This creates what is known as the ampersand problem. For instance, when putting URLs or other material containing ampersands into XML format files such as RSS files the amp; has to be added to the & or they are considered not well formed and computers will be unable to read the files correctly. When working with large quantities of text this can be very problematic. The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) is a metalanguage in which one can define markup languages for documents. ... The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a general-purpose markup language. ... HTML, an initialism of Hypertext Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. ... An SGML entity is an abbreviation for part of a document. ... For RSS feeds from Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Syndication. ...

In Windows menus, labels and other captions, the ampersand is used to denote the keyboard shortcut for that option (Alt + that letter, which appears underlined). Windows redirects here. ... The Alt key on a modern Windows keyboard The Alt key on an IBM PC keyboard is the key located immediately to either side of the Space bar, used to change (alternate) the function of other pressed keys. ...

The ampersand is occasionally used as a prefix to denote a hexadecimal (base 16) number, such as &FF for decimal 255.

Ampersand usage in Perl

Perl uses the ampersand as a sigil to refer to subroutines: Wikibooks has a book on the topic of Perl Programming Perl is a dynamic programming language created by Larry Wall and first released in 1987. ... In computer programming, a sigil is a symbol attached to a variable name, showing the variables datatype. ...

• In Perl 4 and earlier, it was effectively required to call user-defined subroutines^[7]
• In Perl 5, it can still be used to modify the way user-defined subroutines are called^[8]
• In Perl 6, the ampersand sigil is only used when referring to a subroutine as a reference, never when calling it^[9]

Much like C, Perl also uses a single ampersand to do a bitwise AND operation on integers and strings, and a double ampersand as a short-circuit logical AND operation.^[10] In computer programming, a sigil is a symbol attached to a variable name, showing the variables datatype. ... In computer programming, a bitwise operation operates on one or two bit patterns or binary numerals at the level of their individual bits. ... AND Logic Gate In logic and mathematics, logical conjunction (usual symbol and) is a two-place logical operation that results in a value of true if both of its operands are true, otherwise a value of false. ...

Representation

The ampersand is represented by Unicode code point and ASCII character 38, or hexadecimal 0x0026. The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... The Universal Character Set (UCS) is a character encoding that is defined by the international standard ISO/IEC 10646. ... Image:ASCII fullsvg There are 95 printable ASCII characters, numbered 32 to 126. ... In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal, base-16, or simply hex, is a numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16, usually written using the symbols 0–9 and A–F, or a–f. ...

In keyboard layouts, it is often shift-6, shift-7 or shift-8. A standard Hebrew keyboard showing both Hebrew and English (QWERTY) letters. ... The shift key on a modern Windows keyboard The shift key is a modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate upper characters. ... The shift key on a modern Windows keyboard The shift key is a modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate upper characters. ... The shift key on a modern Windows keyboard The shift key is a modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate upper characters. ...

Web standards

The generic URL (Uniform Resource Locator) syntax allows for a query string to be appended to a file name in a web address so that additional information can be passed to a script; the question mark, or query mark, ?, is used to indicate the start of a query string. A query string is usually made up of a number of different field/value pairs, each separated by the ampersand symbol, &. For example, www.example.com/login.php?username=test&password=blank. But see also "Ampersands in URI attribute values". “URL” redirects here. ... In the World Wide Web, a query string is the part of a URL that contains data to be passed to CGI programs. ... ? redirects here. ...

See also

• And
• Kai (abbreviation)
• Tironian notes
• invisable tape

Look up and in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... Tironian notes (notae Tironianae) is a system of shorthand invented by Ciceros scribe Marcus Tullius Tiro. ...

References

Year 1994 (MCMXCIV) The year 1994 was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal by the United Nations. ... is the 158th day of the year (159th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

• Essay concerning the history of the ampersand by Artemy Lebedev

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Ampersand