Welcome to the Grammar Minute, where we’re saving the English language sixty seconds at a time! I’m Lauren Smyth, and I’m still thinking about punctuation. I looked at my keyboard and saw some weird little marks, and one of the weirdest little marks (in my opinion) is the ampersand. Why on earth does that little squiggle mean “and”—and why can’t we just type out “A-N-D?”
Actually the ampersand has little do to with the English word “and” and everything to do with the Latin word “et.” The squiggle, as I’ve described it, is supposed to be a combination of the letters “e” and “t.” At one point, this symbol was actually the 27th letter in the English alphabet. This is probably because the word “and” is used so often that it just made sense to save space, especially in printed materials where every letter had to be typeset by hand. The word “ampersand” is also a shortened form of “and per se and,” which is what British children called the symbol when reciting the alphabet.
I don’t have much against this punctuation mark, except perhaps that it’s unnecessarily fancy and, to most readers, doesn’t have the same “sound” a letter does. You can test this for yourself. How do you pronounce an ampersand? Does your internal voice go silent when you see this symbol, or does it read it as “and?” This silence can interrupt the flow of good writing, which is why I recommend against the ampersand.
That’s your Grammar Minute! Visit thegrammarminute.com for more tips and tricks.