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The Evolution of the Ampersand

Here’s a little something you may not know:

The ampersand is an abbreviated form of the Latin “et” which means “and”.

ampersand

If you have the Trebuchet MS font on your computer you’ll notice that it renders the ampersand like the middle image.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 8:29 am and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “The Evolution of the Ampersand”

  1. Jack Says:
    April 7th, 2008 at 9:58 pm

    Cool! And I’d say it needs one more step where its now reduced (in my messy writing anyway) to just the top half of that last image.
    Speaking of gradual change, and as a bit of an aside - I’ve been meaning to ask you when you made up your mind (putting aside the freewill issue ; ) ) to be an atheist, was it a gradual thing where one day you realised, gee I really don’t believe in God anymore or was it like a light being flicked on (or off), one key thing that made you certain. Was it a big memorable moment the way people often describe it when in the reverse (going from atheist to theist)happens? Just curious, Jack

  2. Damian Says:
    April 7th, 2008 at 10:12 pm

    Good question Jack and one day I’ll probably dedicate a topic to it. In short though, it was a very gradual process - about 14 years in total - but it’s only in the last year or so that I ‘became an atheist’. And, yes, every bit as thrilling as going the other way but this time I’m not counting ‘thrill’ as evidence of truth ;)

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