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

Did you know the Ampersand got its name due to lazy pronunciation. When it was the 27th letter of the alphabet (true story) school children when reciting the alphabet would finish with "...X, Y, Z, and per se And." ie "..and by itself, And." So because people are lazy, that in due course slurred into Ampersand. Eventually, the battle between the warring factions of those who wanted the Ampersand eliminated from the alphabet, and those who didn't was won by the former, which makes total sense bec