{"id":445,"date":"2008-12-13T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2008-12-13T18:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/ampersand-vs-and\/"},"modified":"2008-12-13T12:15:47","modified_gmt":"2008-12-13T18:15:47","slug":"ampersand-vs-and","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/12\/ampersand-vs-and\/","title":{"rendered":"Ampersand vs. “And”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I sometimes see an ampersand used where the word “and” is required.<\/p>\n

Problem:<\/strong>
\nThese two conjunctions are not quite synonyms.<\/p>\n

Explanation:<\/strong>
\nWikipedia has an excellent overview<\/a> of the ampersand.<\/p>\n

As Wikipedia notes, “The word ampersand<\/em> is a corruption of the phrase ‘and per se<\/em> and’, meaning ‘and [the symbol which] by itself [is] and<\/em>‘.”<\/p>\n

The ampersand symbol — & — comes from a ligature of the letters “e” and “t” in the Latin word et<\/em>, which means “and”.<\/p>\n

Although the rise in popularity of SMS text messaging — with its 140-characters-per-message limit — has spurred the increasing use of the one-character “&” as a substitute for the three-character “and”, it is NOT appropriate to use the ampersand absolutely everywhere as a substitute for “and”.<\/p>\n

Here is a summary of where the ampersand is appropriate:<\/p>\n