Our minds have been blown at Juno today with the discovery of where the ampersand came from. We love a good ampersand, not only because of what it stands for (and it’s ability to shorten the word count), but also because of its visual beauty. We all have our favourite typeface, and were super intrigued to find out how it evolved visually. Little did we know that it has a story dating back more than 1500 years when it was the 27th letter of the alphabet. Looking at older typefaces, we can now see the reference to the ‘e’ and the ‘t’, where ancient Romans combined the letters for the Latin word ‘et’, which means ‘and’. The actual word ampersand came many years later when students recited the alphabet and were getting confused saying ‘X, Y, Z, and’. Instead, students learnt to say “and per se and”, which later merged into today’s word, ampersand. MINDS BLOWN. (reference http://goo.gl/zbLOsR)
(Images thanks to Pinterest)
