What Is an Ampersand? The History of the & Symbol

The ampersand is the character &, the one letter-like symbol that stands for a whole word: and. It is among the oldest abbreviations still in daily use, and among the most decorative, since type designers use it as a showcase for their skill.

From et to &

The ampersand started as a ligature of the Latin word et, “and”. In Roman writing the letters E and T were joined into one stroke. Scribes used these joined forms for speed, and across centuries the shape was simplified, rounded and eventually lost its connection to the two letters. Historical examples of the handwritten et ligature survive in Roman cursive writing and early medieval manuscripts, and each step toward the modern shape can be seen in the surviving scripts.

Some italic fonts, such as the italics of Caslon, preserve a more visible form. In these designs the ampersand looks like a clear E with a t attached, which lets you read its origin directly. This also makes the ampersand a perfect example of what a ligature is: two letters merged into a single glyph.

The name

Today’s English name is a contraction. Nineteenth-century children learning the alphabet recited it letter by letter and ended with the sign &, which was announced as “and per se and”. “Per se” means “by itself”, so the phrase says “& by itself is and”. The mouthful was slurred through “and per se and” to “ampersand”, and the term is recorded in English in the early 19th century.

A separate shorthand, the Tironian et (⁊, U+204A), looks like a numeral 7. It is traditionally attributed to Marcus Tullius Tiro, Cicero’s secretary, whose system of shorthand notes gave Roman writers a faster way to record speech. The Tironian et survives in Irish writing, where it is used for agus, “and”, and it is encoded in Unicode as its own character. It is a cousin of the ampersand, not an ancestor of the modern shape.

Ampersands as showpieces

Because the ampersand is not a letter, designers have more freedom with it. Typefaces often include several versions:

Version	Appearance	Where you find it
Roman	A closed, upright form with a loop and a diagonal tail	Most text fonts
Italic	Often an open, flowing form that resembles Et	Serif italics
Script	A large loop and swash tail	Wedding and invitation fonts
Display	Heavily ornamented or decorated	Posters and logos

Wedding invitations are a good place to see this. A stylish ampersand between two names is often set in a different, more decorative font from the names themselves. Pairing a plain serif for the names with a flourished italic ampersand is a common approach, and a single decorative glyph can set the tone for the page.

Drawing the ampersand

For many letterers the ampersand is a favourite exercise. A practical method:

Draw a small oval for the upper bowl, slightly left of centre.
Where it closes, continue the stroke down and to the right as a long diagonal.
Draw a larger belly below, starting from the left of the upper bowl, swinging round the bottom and joining the diagonal.
Finish with a tail, either curling up to the right or flicked outward as a swash.

A reliable first step is to write a lowercase e in cursive, then add a stroke down through it. Repeat that until the shape feels natural, then add personal flourishes. In a name sign or wedding sign the ampersand can be twice the size of the surrounding letters. See cursive sentences for how joined handwriting handles connecting words.

The ampersand in text

The ampersand is U+0026, a basic ASCII character. In HTML it must be written as & in many contexts so that it is not read as the start of a character reference. The ampersand also has other roles in computing: the logical AND in many programming languages, a separator in URL query strings, and the start of HTML entities. No styled version exists in the Mathematical Alphanumeric block, so fancy text generators leave it untouched. If you want something decorative, you can combine it with the text decorator.

Common confusions

The ampersand is not a letter. It is a logogram, a sign for a whole word.
Do not use it in formal prose. Most style guides prefer “and” in running text, with the symbol kept for names, titles and tables.
The ampersand is not “and” in all fonts. A few decorative ones are so abstract that readers do not recognise them, so keep legibility in mind.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the word ampersand come from?

It is a corruption of "and per se and", a phrase schoolchildren recited in the 19th century and earlier. Reciting the alphabet, the symbol & was added at the end and named "and per se and", meaning "& by itself is and". Slurred over generations, that became ampersand.

How do you draw an ampersand by hand?

Start with a small upper loop, sweep a diagonal stroke down to the right, then add a larger lower belly that closes back onto the diagonal and ends in a rising tail. A simple warm-up is to write a looped lowercase e and extend its end. Practise the plain shape before adding flourishes.

What is the symbol before the ampersand in the alphabet?

In the English schoolroom alphabet recited in the 19th century, the ampersand was often added as a 27th character after Z. That recitation is where its name comes from, because children said "and per se and" to name the sign.

How do I type an ampersand in plain text and HTML?

On most keyboards it is Shift plus 7, and its code point is U+0026. In HTML you write & so the browser does not treat the & as the start of a character reference. Fancy Unicode generators leave the ampersand unchanged because no styled variant of it exists in the math alphanumeric block.