Did You Know? The Ampersand (&) Was Once the 27th Letter of the English Alphabet!

Hey there, curious friend! Ever looked at the ‘&’ symbol and just kind of accepted it as… well, the ‘and’ symbol? It’s so common, we barely give it a second thought, right? But what if I told you this humble little character has a wild history, so wild that it used to be an actual, official letter of the English alphabet? Seriously!

Imagine learning your ABCs, and after ‘Z’, you’d actually have to say ‘and per se and’. That’s where the name ‘ampersand’ comes from! It’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it? The symbol itself is actually a super old ligature – basically, two letters combined into one. Its roots go all the way back to ancient Rome. Scribes, those super diligent writers of old, were always looking for ways to speed things up, and they started merging the letters ’e’ and ’t’ together. Why ’et’? Because ’et’ is Latin for ‘and’. Over time, that joined-up ’e’ and ’t’ morphed and changed, losing its obvious ’e’ and ’t’ appearance and evolving into the curvy ‘&’ we know today.

For centuries, especially in English-speaking schools, when kids recited the alphabet, they wouldn’t just stop at ‘Z’. Oh no, the ampersand was right there at the end, proudly taking its place. But because it represented the word ‘and’ itself, and not a distinct sound like ‘A’ or ‘B’, they’d have to say “and per se and” to differentiate it from just saying the word ‘and’ as part of a sentence. ‘Per se’ means “by itself” or “as such” in Latin. So, it was literally “and (the symbol) by itself (means) ‘and’”. Eventually, this long phrase “and per se and” got slurred together over time into what we now call ‘ampersand’! How cool is that?

It might not be taught in schools as the 27th letter anymore, but next time you type it out or scribble it down, you’ll know you’re using a character with a truly epic past – one that was once counted among the very building blocks of our language, right alongside A, B, and C!