What does this look like to you?

[easy 7]

&

 

To me, it looks like either someone dragging their bum across the floor, or someone trying to give themselves head..

[Brian 50]

An "and" sign.

[MineCrack 62]

"&" redirects here. For other uses, see And .

This article is about the symbol. For the magazine, see Ampersand (magazine). For the not-for-profit organisation, see Ampersand Network.

♥&

Ampersand

Punctuation

apostrophe ( ’ ' )

brackets ( [ ], ( ), { }, ⟨ ⟩ )

colon ( : )

comma ( , ، 、 )

dash ( ‒, –, —, ― )

ellipsis ( …, ..., . . . )

exclamation mark ( ! )

full stop/period ( . )

guillemets ( « » )

hyphen ( ‐ )

hyphen-minus ( - )

question mark ( ? )

quotation marks ( ‘ ’, “ ”, ' ', " " )

semicolon ( ; )

slash♥/stroke♥/solidus ( /, ⁄ )

Word dividers

space ( ) ( ) ( )

interpunct ( · )

General typography

ampersand ( & )

at sign ( @ )

asterisk ( * )

backslash ( \ )

bullet ( • )

caret ( ^ )

dagger ( †, ‡ )

degree ( ° )

ditto mark ( 〃 )

inverted exclamation mark ( ¡ )

inverted question mark ( ¿ )

number sign♥/pound♥/hash ( # )

numero sign ( № )

obelus ( ÷ )

ordinal indicator ( º, ª )

percent, per mil ( %, ‰, ‱ )

pilcrow ( ¶ )

prime ( ′, ″, ‴ )

section sign ( § )

tilde ( ~ )

underscore♥/understrike ( _ )

vertical bar♥/broken bar♥/pipe ( ¦, | )

Intellectual property

copyright symbol ( © )

registered trademark ( ® )

service mark ( ℠ )

sound recording copyright ( ℗ )

trademark ( ™ )

Currency

currency (generic) ( ¤ )

currency (specific)

( ₳ ฿ ₵ ¢ ₡ ₢ ₠ $ ₫ ৳ ₯ € ƒ ₣ ₲ ₴ ₭ ℳ ₥ ₦ ₧ ₱ ₰ £ ₹ ₨ ₪ ₸ ₮ ₩ ¥ ៛ )

Uncommon typography

asterism ( ⁂ )

tee ( ⊤ )

up tack ( ⊥ )

index/fist ( ☞ )

therefore sign ( ∴ )

because sign ( ∵ )

interrobang ( ‽ )

irony punctuation ( ؟ )

lozenge ( ◊ )

reference mark ( ※ )

tie ( ⁀ )

Related

diacritical marks

whitespace characters

non-English quotation style ( « », „ ” )

In other scripts

Chinese punctuation

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An ampersand (or epershand; "&") is a logogram representing the conjunction word "and". This symbol is a ligature of the letters in et, Latin for "and".

Contents [hide]

1 Etymology

2 History

3 Writing the ampersand

4 Usage

5 Computing

5.1 Encoding and display

5.2 Programming languages

5.3 Text markup

5.4 Unix shells

5.5 Web standards

6 See also

7 References

8 External links

[edit]Etymology

 

The word ampersand is a conflation of the phrase "and per se and", meaning "and [the symbol which] by itself [is] and".[1]

Traditionally, in English-speaking schools when reciting the alphabet, any letter that could also be used as a word in itself ("A", "I", and, at one point, "O") was preceded by the Latin expression per se (Latin for "by itself"). Also, it was common practice to add at the end of the alphabet the "&" sign as the 27th letter, pronounced and. Thus, the recitation of the alphabet would end in: "X, Y, Z and per se and". This last phrase was routinely slurred to "ampersand" and the term crept into common English usage by around 1837.[2][3]

Through popular etymology, it has been falsely claimed that André-Marie Ampère used the symbol in his widely read publications, and that people began calling the new shape "Ampère's and".[4]