How the Ampersand Got its Name

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(Hah, that title sounds like a children’s story, doesn’t it!)

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Don’t know about you, but I love the quirky histories of words.

As an example, I was watching this Merriam-Webster video on how the ampersand (you know, the & symbol) got its name. (Wikipedia also has more details.)

To summarize loosely:

The & symbol is a written abbreviation of “et”, the Latin word for “and”. (Medieval scribes had to write this word over and over, and it was easier to write as &.)

& made it into English, too, and for a while is was even included in the alphabet. Letters like I and & sometimes stand as a word, so to distinguish them as such, they used to be referred to as “I per se I” and “& per se &” (spoken as “and per se and”. The per se bit basically means “by itself”.)

Over time, this morphed into “ampersand”. Isn’t that cool?

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You know, with all these useful bits of information it contains, this ‘Internet’ thing may just catch on…

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I thought this was the introduction to this week’s design newsletter! cc @alexmwalker

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