ampersand
/ˈampəsand
/noun
The sign & (standing for and, as in Smith & Co., or the Latin et, as in &c.).This includes quotes, apostrophes, ellipses, em and en dashes, multiplication symbols, and ampersands....
- But what is so special about the ampersand, specifically, in regard to this?
- To keep your URL as simple as possible, try to exclude characters such as question marks and ampersands.
Origin
Late 18th century: alteration of and per se and ‘ & by itself is and’, formerly chanted as an aid to learning the sign.
A corruption of ‘and per se and’, an old phrase that used to be chanted by schoolchildren as a way of learning the character &. Per se is Latin for ‘by itself’, so the phrase can be translated ‘& by itself is and’. The word is recorded from the mid 19th century, while the symbol itself is based on a Roman shorthand symbol for Latin et ‘and’.