Interesting facts about the symbol '&' and ways to celebrate Ampersand Day

The symbol lsquoamprsquo known as the ampersand was once considered a letter in the English alphabet before it was removed Originating in Pompeii in the first century CE it came from the Latin lsquoetrsquo meaning lsquoandrsquo When the letters lsquoersquo and lsquotrsquo were combined together in writing they looked like lsquoamprsquo Today the ampersand is widely used in poems names of organisations even in pop culture when referring to famous pairs like Batman amp Robin Tom amp Jerry and Frodo amp Sam To usher the day here are five cool facts about the symbolEE Cummings1 The origin story In the 1800s in Britain the English alphabet ended with the letters X Y Z and amp This made the ampersand the 27th letter To distinguish it from the conjunction lsquoandrsquo which spoken aloud would make the alphabet end abruptly they wrote ldquoper serdquo before the symbol This implied ldquoby itself amprdquo It would read ldquoX Y Z and per se amprdquo While reciting childrenrsquos tongues would often slip into pronouncing ldquoand per se amprdquo as ampersand This is how the name came to beCover of EE Cummingsrsquos poetry book comprising 25 poems right The English alphabet including the ampersand2 Experiments in poetry Several poets have used the ampersand as stylistic choices within their poems The bestknown story is of the modernist poet EE Cummings Cummings was a major proponent of experimentation in poetry ignoring the conventions of grammar His first collection of poems Tulips and Chimneys was originally titled Tulips amp Chimneys However his publisher didnrsquot want to risk its censorship and therefore refused to use the ampersand The symbol was not commonly accepted at the time in formal practices of writing Later Cummings selfpublished the 25 poems that were removed from the first collection and titled the book ampAvailable Leading bookstores amp estores3 Encoding with amp In HTML the ampersand is used when the coder wishes to denote a known entity For instance if one is to display a double quotation mark the entity that one types for it is ampquot That is ampersand followed by the abbreviated name of the entity and closed with a semicolon Similarly if one were to display the symbol of copyright one would enter the text ampcopy4 Crediting in America In cinema itrsquos become a common practice to use the ampersand to show a collaboration between two screenwriters as a team When the people work separately on the same film ie in their individual capacity than together the word ldquoandrdquo is used in the end credits instead ofthe ampersand5 Raising relief funds The year 2010 saw a significant use of the symbol in design When the earthquake hit Haiti the Society of Typographic Aficionados launched the Font Aid IV project which brought design communities together to raise relief funds for the victims of the disaster Around 400 designers contributed designs of ampersands which collectively became the collaborative font of the project The font came to be called the Coming Together font and the proceeds from those who bought the typeface went to the victimsLog on to typesocietyorgfontaidivFive ways to celebrate the day1 Bake an ampersandshaped cake and share these facts with your friends or family during teatime2 Artists must try five different ways of typography of the ampersand3 Challenge yourself to a oneminute writing activity where you use the ampersand in creative ways4 Create a fun quiz for your friends with some strange facts about the English alphabet5 Watch a movie with the ampersand in the title