Why is the G Clef symbol used in sentences? Or, AND the beat goes on

While I was in line at an ice cream stand one hot summer day, I overheard a little girl ask her dad the above question. Puzzled, of course I wondered what the hell she was talking about! I heard her dad explain that it wasn't a G Clef, but rather a symbol for the word "And". Smart beyond her precocious years, the girl replied "With all the time it takes to draw the symbol, it would be easier to write the word out." Her dad did not mention that the word for the "G Clef" symbol used in sentences is "ampersand", and that got me to delving...as a cunning linguist is want to do; exactly what is the story behind the ampersand?

Found and paraphrased from businessballs.com:

ampersand - the 'amp' symbol (&), meaning 'and'. The word ampersand appeared in the English language around 1835. It is a corrupted (confused) derivation of the term "And per se", which was the original formal name of the 'amp' symbol(&) in glossaries, alphabets, and official reference works.

'Per se' is Latin and means 'by itself', as it still does today. Traditionally all letters were referenced formally in the same way. The letter A would have been 'A per se', B would have been called 'B per se', just as the 'amp' symbol (&) was 'And per se'. The ampersand symbol itself is a combination - originally a ligature (literally, a joining) - of the letters E and t, or E and T, that being the Latin word 'et' meaning 'and'. Also, it was common practice to add at the end of the alphabet the "&" sign, pronounced "and". Thus, the recitation of the alphabet would end in: "X, Y, Z and per se and." This last phrase was routinely slurred to "ampersand" and the term crept into common English usage by around 1837.

The earliest representations of the ampersand symbol are found in Roman scriptures dating back nearly 2,000 years. If you inspect various ampersand symbols you'll see the interpretation of the root ET or Et letters.

The symbol has provided font designers more scope for artistic impression than any other character, and ironically while it evolved from hand-written script, few people use it in modern hand-writing, which means that most of us have difficulty in reproducing a good-looking ampersand by hand without having practiced first.

So, there you have it...attempt to include the most ancient of ligatures in your vernacular, and get your ampersand on...because cunning linguists do it with the mouth :-)

Vernacular Trickery