The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram &, representing the conjunction "and". It originated as a ligature of the letters et—Latin for "and".
Bilingual Irish street sign, with parallel agus and ampersand.
An ampersand written with a vertical stroke
An ampersand written with the vertical stroke merged into the edges
A handwritten plus sign used, like the ampersand, to mean "and"
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined to form a single glyph. Examples are the characters ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨œ⟩ used in English and French, in which the letters ⟨a⟩ and ⟨e⟩ are joined for the first ligature and the letters ⟨o⟩ and ⟨e⟩ are joined for the second ligature. For stylistic and legibility reasons, ⟨f⟩ and ⟨i⟩ are often merged to create ⟨fi⟩ ; the same is true of ⟨s⟩ and ⟨t⟩ to create ⟨st⟩. The common ampersand, ⟨&⟩, developed from a ligature in which the handwritten Latin letters ⟨e⟩ and ⟨t⟩ were combined.
Wood type sorts with ligatures of (from left to right) ⟨fl⟩, ⟨ft⟩, ⟨ff⟩, ⟨fi⟩; in 20 Cicero = 240 Didot points ≈ 90.2328 mm (typeface Futura bold condensed)
A widely used Th ligature in a handwriting-style typeface
Ligatures "Th" and "Wh" illustration
"ß" in the form of a "ſʒ" ligature on a street sign in Berlin (Petersburger Straße). The sign on the right (Bersarinplatz) ends with a "tʒ" ligature ("ꜩ").
