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

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 08:00:34 +0000

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.

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