The ampersand (&) originated with Roman scribes around the 1st century AD who sought to write more efficiently. They created a ligature by combining the letters "e" and "t" from the Latin word "et," which means "and." This practice was a feature of evolving Roman cursive scripts. The symbol became particularly common in medieval monastic scriptoria, where monks copying manuscripts used it to streamline their laborious work on expensive parchment. The name itself is a more recent invention. In 19

Happy National Ampersand Day! Today honors the ampersand or “&” for its role in written language. The “&” symbol is a ligature for “et,” which is Latin for “and.” In this video, Howard prints a French Clarendon type family of ampersands and uses them as an example of how you would measure wood type. #NationalAmpersandDay #ampersand #typography #letterpress #printingpress #printing #sacramento | Sacramento History Museum

17K views · 635 reactions | September 8th is World Ampersand Day!...