Ampersand (2015)(haggardhawksblog.blogspot.com)

167 pointsby alex_young3 anni fa91 comments

haggardhawksblog.blogspot.com

Ampersand (2015)

http://haggardhawksblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/ampersand.html

24 comments

> [...] A would be read as “A per se A”, [...] I, similarly, would be “I per se I” [...] O would be “O per se O”

That's incorrect, these would have been respectively "per se A", "per se I", and "per se O." The confusion is coming from how the ampersand was listed out in the alphabet:

> The alphabet is A, ..., X, Y, Z, and per se and.

That doesn't mean "&" was spelled out as "and per se and" separately. The first and is because it's the last item in a list in a sentence. Only the second and is part of the full phrase of per se and. If you use it as a single item in a sentence, it works like this:

> The last letter of the alphabet is per se and.

The last sentence of the article:

> the alphabet once ended with a final “X, Y, Z, and & per se &”.

Should be:

> the alphabet once ended with a final “X, Y, Z, and per se &”.

bazoom423 anni fa

Thank you. I was really confused by the article. This makes a lot more sense.

smcin3 anni fa

Well, by the 19th-century mainly in (British?) English, according to those sources. By then had been abandoned in other European languages.

Britannica [0] says:

- invented by Romans c. 1st century BCE as a shorthand for 'et', can be seen from Pompeii

- was [also] prevalent in German manuscripts throughout the 19th century.

- gradually abandoned by most [non-English] languages by the end of the 19th century, with the notable exception of Gaelic, where it's also still used [as an evolution of the rival Tironian symbol].

and [1] has a really interesting illustration by Houston (1957) citing Tschichold (1953), showing the evolution of the ampersand over 2000 years, from Pompeii through 8th-C Merovingian Latin to modern-day.

Latterly got pressganged by our C/C++ brethren.

[0]: https://www.britannica.com/topic/ampersand

[1]: https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2020/12/ampersand-2.html

TRiG_Ireland3 anni fa

The Tironian et is still preferred in Irish and Scottish Gaelic.

Here's an example from Ireland: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pay_and_Display_sign...

(I don't know about the other Gaelic language, Manx, but I suspect that they prefer the ampersand. Their orthography is more English-like generally.)

smcin3 anni fa

Yes, hadn't known where it came from until this discussion.

Another prominent use in Irish was the old pre-1984 P&T / P⁊Ꞇ (Posts and Telegraphs) logo:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_for_Posts_and_Telegra...

Image of sign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Irish_Post_%26_Telegraphs...

Another old P⁊T anti-vandalism sign: https://www.pinterest.ie/pin/506162445597268179/

carlmr3 anni fa

> - was [also] prevalent in German manuscripts throughout the 19th century.

It's still common enough in Germany, but mostly used for company names if you combine two names. E.g. Müller & Schmidt. Which is why it's also called the "Kaufmanns Und", the "merchants' and".

azepoi3 anni fa

also sometimes called "Et commercial" in french, so "commercial and". The official name is esperluette which has a nice and probably similar history as ampersand.

croisillon3 anni fa

though german companies love to write themselves Müller + Schmidt

[deleted]3 anni fa

emersion3 anni fa

To anyone trying to figure out what the missing "Eyetests were a lot easier in the 1920s" image was referring to, here's a link to an archived version:

https://web.archive.org/web/20191128021121/http://dlewis.net...

themodelplumber3 anni fa

Fascinating!

I can just hear the lettering conversation...

"We need a font with a TON of contrast for this. The thin parts should be negligible. Hairline.

People should get to the R, reflect back on what they now realize was an H, and then start thinking about a more appropriate career"

kamray233 anni fa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didone_(typography)

tudorw3 anni fa

did they just hold it nearer or further away?

mgaunard3 anni fa

I think the bigger problem is that you can predict what a letter is from its position regardless of whether you can read it.

tudorw3 anni fa

hmm, that is true, but hey maybe not if you don't know the order of the alphabet ;)

tudorw3 anni fa

also I don't think eye tests work if you lie?

mdswanson3 anni fa

If you like this, I'd highly recommend the book, "Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks": https://a.co/d/iqGNnyi

newqer3 anni fa

I'm getting The Da Vinci Code vibes.

blowski3 anni fa

As in you think it’s a load of curious but bullshit stories?

weinzierl3 anni fa

Not on punctuation specifically but otherwise highly recommended Robert Bringhurst's "The Elements of Typographic Style" discusses the ampersand and its usage in great depth. Somehow Bringhurst's obsession with this character is almost uncanny.

Timwi3 anni fa

In German, the & character is known as “kaufmännisches Und”, or “tradesman’s and”. For this reason, I used to believe that ampersand was really “amper’s and” and amper was somehow an obsolete word for tradesman.

Needless to say, that it not the case, but it felt very convincing.

augusto-moura3 anni fa

In some latin languages we have a similar modern name ("e comercial" in portuguese, "y comercial" in spanish, "E commerciale" in italian), literally meaning "commercial 'and'". I'm not sure about the history about it though

hoosieree3 anni fa

Amper (noun): one who amps.

Today we use the term "influencer".

Did you know that the term "computer" used to refer to an occupation? The same used to be true for audio amplifiers. It was a role traditionally occupied by the loudest shouter in the village.

weinzierl3 anni fa

I thought the same way. It's kind of so obvious but also so wrong.

andrepd3 anni fa

In Portuguese it's the "commercial and".

joosters3 anni fa

I was visiting the V&A museum the other day and came across some stone typography carvings by Eric Gill - they include A-Z, 0-9 and also just &. I wonder if this is why? (However, the ampersand is still very much separate from the alphabet on the stone)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Gill#/media/File:Eric_Gil...

iainmerrick3 anni fa

What a beautiful carving! I love the Q’s and R’s.

ars3 anni fa

I'm an advocate of bringing back thorn (Þ, þ) to replace the th, and yogh (Ȝ ȝ) to replace gh in words.

No need for unnecessary digraphs with special pronunciation. I'm sure we could find other letters for the rest of them.

carlmr3 anni fa

>I'm sure we could find other letters for the rest of them.

Looking at the number of pronunciations for the same letter sequence in English you'd probably need an alphabet with hundredsof letters to make this happen.

At this point you can just switch to IPA instead.

kristopolous3 anni fa

I'm going to plug my friends project about this https://www.ekalipi.org/

Don't ask me to defend it though. Good friend but not my project

He was a software dev for like 45 years if you can tell from the site design

zerocrates3 anni fa

The "and per se and" origin sure feels like the kind of folk etymology that ultimately doesn't really have anything backing it up.

But as far as I can see there really isn't any controversy over it.

croisillon3 anni fa

since the french version esperluette comes from occitan "es per lou et", meaning "is for the and", i would say it is plausible

hknmtt3 anni fa

i'm reading a 70yo book and there is "&c" used instead of "etc".

chrismorgan3 anni fa

I hope it’s “&c.”, not “&c”.

the_mitsuhiko3 anni fa

It's particularly common in German blackletter texts though they use ⁊c instead of &c, same origin though.

1-more3 anni fa

Anyone else wondering what that little guy is it's a "Tironian et" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tironian_notes

thanatos5193 anni fa

I still write like that!

agalunar3 anni fa

Same! nice to meet another "&c" user ^_^

I'm afraid I can't remember why I began writing "&c" rather than "etc", although I know I now prefer it (rather than it merely being a matter of habit) since it neatly separates the "et" and the "cetera" and looks cute to boot. Do you remember where you picked up the practice?

wjdp3 anni fa

I adopted it as etc or e.t.c. just seemed so clunky

1-more3 anni fa

Dots are used to denote that the previous character is an initial for a longer word. Since "et" is a whole word you only put the dot after the "c" that stands for "cetera" so "e.t.c" is kind of a hypercorrection like octopi, ignorami, or habañero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection

moffkalast3 anni fa

Well clearly the pointer to c is on address 10111699.

Camillo3 anni fa

It wasn't a letter of the alphabet any more than the dollar sign, the pound sign, or punctuation were letters of the alphabet. It wasn't used in words. All that happened is that someone decided to put it at the end of the alphabet song to teach it to children, and that's where it got the name.

martyvis3 anni fa

I remember getting a rubber stamp set as a kid here in Australia, probably around time I started school in 1968. They definitely had an ampersand, dollar and cents stamp and even "No." (with the superscript o)

TRiG_Ireland3 anni fa

The Numero Sign, №, despite representing Latin letters, apparently arose in Cyrillic usage as an independent symbol. Most languages just use No or Nr.

the_mitsuhiko3 anni fa

> It wasn't a letter of the alphabet any more than the dollar sign, the pound sign, or punctuation were letters of the alphabet.

I'm not aware of historic English alphabets that include the dollar or pound sign or any sort of punctuation. On the other hand there is a lot of evidence of & being part of the alphabet. Wikipedia has or links to plenty of cases:

* Old Saxon alphabet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_Latin_alphabet#/me...

* The Dixie Primer, for the Little Folks: https://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/moore/moore.html#moore5

* Byrhtferð's Old English Alphabet: https://www.evertype.com/standards/wynnyogh/thorn.html

* My Own Primer, or First Lessons in Spelling and Reading: https://shadycharacters.co.uk/2011/07/the-ampersand-part-2%C...

None of these are songs.

chrismorgan3 anni fa

Old Saxon alphabet: despite being on an alphabet page, it’s very clearly separated from the letters.

I’m not at all convinced that it was ever what you might call a letter of the alphabet. Although it seems to not have been rare to group it with the letters in some way, I have received the impression it wasn’t particularly common, and that it wasn’t how people generally thought of it. Nowadays we would draw a clear distinction between letters, numbers and symbols (maybe we have more symbols? though certainly fewer ligatures/abbreviations like Ƿᵉ), and call the alphabet just the letters, but I get the vibe that maybe “alphabet” wasn’t so strictly just the letters. But I handwave liberally and provide no sources in this mostly-uneducated suspicion of mine.

tptacek3 anni fa

My understanding was that it's a ligature of the letters 'et', Latin for "and" (you can see it pretty clearly in some scripts, but it's not at all obvious in the typeface we're using here). But then, there used to be a letter for 'th', too.

eCa3 anni fa

> But then, there used to be a letter for 'th', too.

Which, with time, turned into the ”Ye” of ”Ye olde <thing>” [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_articles#Ye_form

hnlmorg3 anni fa

Nearly. There was an abbreviation for “th” that latter looked like “y” (not “ye”) and with the invention of the pressing press, the letter “y” was often used as a substitute for the “throne” character (the character that represented “th”). So “ye” means “the”.

TRiG_Ireland3 anni fa

It wasn't an abbreviation for th; it was a separate letter in its own right with its own etymology.

hnlmorg3 anni fa

Good point. Thanks for the correction.

dragonwriter3 anni fa

> But then, there used to be a letter for ‘th’, too.

Actually, there used to be two separate letters for ‘th’, Ð/ð (“eth”) and Þ/þ (“thorn”). Þ hung around longer than Ð, though.

mathieuh3 anni fa

Thorn and eth of course still exist in Icelandic, and eth still exists in Faroese.

Interestingly, the IPA symbol for the "th" in "the" is eth, but the symbol for the "th" in "think" is θ (Greek theta)

"The" = /ðə/ "Think" = /θɪŋk/

Not sure why that is, I'm only an amateur linguist

frogulis3 anni fa

Just had a browse of Wikipedia and am now more confused.

It states that the consonants of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romic_alphabet are the same as were adopted by IPA, except "⟨ñ ᵹ ɹ λ ꞁ⟩ were eventually replaced with ⟨ɲ ɣ ʕ ʎ ʟ⟩ in the IPA". No mention of ⟨θ⟩ in that sentence.

However, looking at the table on that page, the "th" in "think" is represented by ⟨þ⟩!

Going back to the first version of IPA on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_International_P... the "th" in "think" is represented by ⟨θ⟩.

Looking at the other two major early influences mentioned in that article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Phonotypic_Alphabet and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palaeotype_alphabet neither uses ⟨θ⟩ for that sound either. By the looks of it, English Phonotypic Alphabet uses a capital theta to represent a vowel sound!

BerislavLopac3 anni fa

And Đ/đ also exists in Croatian, but for a completely different sound (something like the "j" in "juice").

adrian_b3 anni fa

I do not know if this is the reason, but when reading quickly thorn is very easy to confuse with p or b.

srcreigh3 anni fa

The word “ye” as in “ye olde inn” used to be written “Þe olde inn”. Aka “the olde inn”.

When thorn fell out of use we replace it with y for these archaic spellings. But it was always “the”.

AriedK3 anni fa

Earlier discussion, different source, roughly the same information. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32249465

call_me_g0d3 anni fa

Thanks for sharing this interesting history of the ampersand! It's always fascinating to learn about the origins of common symbols and phrases. I had heard that the ampersand was derived from the Latin word for "and", but I didn't know about its former status as a letter of the alphabet or the story behind its name.

nailer3 anni fa

> So the letter A would be read as “A per se A”, to ensure it was distinguished from the indefinite article a. The letter I, similarly, would be “I per se I” to differentiate it from the pronoun I. And the letter O would be “O per se O” to differentiate it from the interjection O!

But we don’t want et the letter et here, we want the word et.

RichieAHB3 anni fa

The way I read the article is that the ampersand became a de facto 27th letter, so "and per se and" meant "the letter &", wheres "and" meant "the word and".

nailer3 anni fa

Yes re 27th letter, hence me writing that we want the word et (also known as ‘and’) not the letter. The author says the opposite in the part I quoted:

> The letter I, similarly, would be “I per se I” to differentiate it from the pronoun I

We want the word and/et in this case - we are saying 'John and Jane' not 'John (letter et) Jane'. So the author's logic is not consistent.

Or I'm missing something.

Alternative, more logical explanation (which may be garbage as it is unreferenced from wikipedia):

> It was also common practice to add the & sign at the end of the alphabet as if it were the 27th letter, pronounced as the Latin et or later in English as and. As a result, the recitation of the alphabet would end in "X, Y, Z, and per se and".

NathanielBaking3 anni fa

The Milk Carton Kids do a funny bit about this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idpZRb8VP50 If you haven't heard of them and like singer-song writer with harmonies check em out.

retrocryptid3 anni fa

Is it just me or is Haggard Hawk spouting ideas without citations? I don't know if they're right, but it would be cool if there were a link or two to an established source like an academic journal or even a Wikipedia page.

iddan3 anni fa

Interestingly enough, modern Hebrew adopted the sign. Even though it is not Latin-based / using the Latin alphabet. Probably as speakers knew it from other languages and the British mandate period

silisili3 anni fa

That's interesting, I for one had no idea.

Does anyone have an explanation for the e and t, though? I don't see any of either of those letters in it. Maybe a tiny bit of e, but surely no t....

alex_young3 anni fa

Wikipedia has some interesting discussion on that point: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand

eyelidlessness3 anni fa

You can see more of the shape in some type faces, it’s a capital E and lowercase t in cursive script. Once you see it, it’s also hard to unsee.

jwilk3 anni fa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trebuchet_MS_ampersand.sv... is a great example.

kitd3 anni fa

My Linux computer has the Caladea typeface installed. '&' in that is clearly `e` and `t` elided.

ed: See https://d144mzi0q5mijx.cloudfront.net/img/C/A/Caladea0.png

javier_e063 anni fa

So is A(merican) T(elephone) and per se T(elegraph Company). eh? I've been saying wrong all this time.

Kiro3 anni fa

Bad title change. The last one summarized the whole article perfectly and made for interesting discussions.

makach3 anni fa

Nothing quite like going down the rabbit hole on a Tuesday.

cryptoz3 anni fa

&

And per se and and per se and;

eyelidlessness3 anni fa

& As It Is Such, So Also As Such Is It Unto You;

ShamelessC3 anni fa

Peace be with you.

JasonFruit3 anni fa

& cum spiritu tuo.

sebstefan3 anni fa

(1)

kgwgk3 anni fa

Wrong title.

    Ampersand was once “and per se and” & was …

should be

    Ampersand was once “and per se” and & was …

mjamesaustin3 anni fa

According to the article, the former title is correct. The term was in fact "and per se and".

dragonwriter3 anni fa

No, title is correct, the name of the letter was pronounced “and per se and”, which slurred into the modern “ampersand”, and since “Ampersand” is the subject of the first clause of the sentence and the second clause is a dependent clause connected by a conjunction, not an independent clause joined by a comma and a conjunction, the subject doesn’t need repeated: the “&” is just the conjunction “and” not a repetition of the subject “ampersand”.

kgwgk3 anni fa

Ok, I stand corrected.

But saying that the name of the character “&” was pronounced “and per se and” is like saying that the name of the character “Z” is pronounced “and zee” or “and zed”.

boffinism3 anni fa

No it isn't. The first "and" in "and per se and" isn't a conjunction. So you could actually say:

I per se I, O per se O, and and per se and.

kgwgk3 anni fa

One could say whatever one wants but I think that in this case it’s actually a conjunction and I doubt anybody has ever said “I per se I” (Edited to add: actually that makes sense - for the letter i - but in a different context: spelling and not alphabet recitation. “c, a, r : car”, “i : I”. _letter_ (per se) : _word_)

https://www.englishclub.com/efl/podcasts/interesting-facts/a...

At the end of the alphabet, students would say “X,Y,Z and, per se, & (and)”.

boffinism3 anni fa

Re "I doubt anybody has ever said I per se I" (in the context of alphabet recitation) may I draw your attention to this article[0]:

> Up until as recently as the mid 1900s, it was standard practice when reciting the alphabet to use the Latin phrase per se (literally “by itself”) to differentiate between individual letters of the alphabet—like A, I, and O—and single-character homographic words—like a, I and O.

> So the letter A would be read as “A per se A”, to ensure it was distinguished from the indefinite article a. The letter I, similarly, would be “I per se I” to differentiate it from the pronoun I. And the letter O would be “O per se O” to differentiate it from the interjection O!

[0] http://haggardhawksblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/ampersand.html

kgwgk3 anni fa

Thank for the link but that seems misleading or just wrong. “A per se A” means

    “a” (per se = by itself = as a letter) [spells the word] “a”

Nobody would recite the alphabet as

    a per se a, bee, …, aitch, i per se i, jay, …

and ending with

    … zee and per se and

means

    … zee and “&”

It was not, at claimed there,

    Y, Z, and & per se &

In that case the modern name would be _andampersand_!

[deleted]3 anni fa

gameman1443 anni fa

How is it like saying "and zee"? The article pretty clearly outlines the logic here, and this would not be like that. If anything, it'd be "zee per se zee".

[deleted]3 anni fa

kgwgk3 anni fa

Because the alphabet was “a, b, …, x, y, z and &” (pronounced “… why zed and per se and”) and now it’s “a, b, …, x, y and z” (pronounced “… why and zed”).

boffinism3 anni fa

You're missing that "& per se &" would still have been called that even if it wasn't the last item in the list. If the order was "...y, & and z" you'd pronounce it "why and per se and and zed".

kgwgk3 anni fa

Is there any reason to believe so?

Maybe it’s you who is missing what’s going on.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-origin-of-the-ampersand

& was named ampersand in the context of rattling off the letters of the alphabet in English: “double-you ex wye izzard/zed, and”.

“… And what?”

“And, on its own, and” (and, per se, and).

With “and” named in English, because this was an English rattling off of the alphabet.

boffinism3 anni fa

> Is there any reason to believe so?

Yes, specificially this article: http://haggardhawksblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/ampersand.html

kgwgk3 anni fa

I agree with palotasb about that article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35611618

SilasX3 anni fa

Yes, they’re being overclever “&” earning an eyeroll from me (& everyone who expects headlines to be clear and easily parseable.