8

“&” (ampersand) was from a ligature of e and t. but it looks nothing like e and t put together. Why?

Community
  • 1
Keon N
  • 131
  • 1
  • 4
  • See https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/476429/how-does-the-ampersand-in-most-fonts-resemble-et – Draconis Jun 09 '22 at 04:11
  • 1
    Handwritten ampersands tend to look like an epsilon-style "e" with a vertical stroke (a "t" without the crossbar) through it. – chepner Jun 09 '22 at 17:40

1 Answers1

26

To put it simply, it evolved over time and generally isn't seen as a ligature of E and t any more.

chasly on ELU offers this demonstration:

image showing Et merging into the ampersand

Other fonts may show the Et connection more clearly.

image showing different ampersands

Draconis
  • 65,972
  • 3
  • 141
  • 215
  • 3
    It also helps to know what Roman cursive writing looked like, as opposed to the block letters that formed the basis of the uppercase letters. The Wikipedia article shows some additional details of the evolution. – chepner Jun 09 '22 at 17:39
  • @chepner Does the & have anything to do with Roman cursive though? The "Tironian et" is a separate thing. – Draconis Jun 09 '22 at 18:10
  • I'm referring to the first paragraph under the "History" section, which mentions Roman cursive. Tirnion "et" is mentioned later in the article as a separate shorthand symbol (which I would maybe best describe as coincidentally similar to a lowercase cursive "t"?). – chepner Jun 09 '22 at 18:20
  • 1
    @chepner Ah, I see. I wasn't aware of that connection but feel free to write it up as another answer! – Draconis Jun 09 '22 at 18:21
  • @spectras I very much doubt Roman cursive was taught in France up until 2013, except in highly specialised university classes. ‘Roman cursive’ is a specific thing, not just any handwritten, cursive variant of the Latin alphabet. The Old Roman cursive hasn’t been used since around the fourth century AD and is pretty much undecipherable to modern-day laypersons; and while the New Roman cursive does start to become more similar to the current Latin alphabet, it’s still very hard to read without training and has been out of use for about 1,300 years. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jun 19 '22 at 00:12
  • @JanusBahsJacquet> I am sorry I do not know the names of the scripts and I trust you on this. I removed the misleading comment. Would you mind giving the proper name so I don't make that mistake again? Here is a sample: http://ekladata.com/zXQokykmXBepmvGuod0p84v3_k4@490x244.jpg (full of grammar problems but that's irrelevant :-) ) – spectras Jun 19 '22 at 00:42
  • @spectras I don’t know if there is a specific name for that type of script. I would just call it ‘joined-up handwriting’. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jun 19 '22 at 06:14
  • The third example on the bottom clearly looks like italic "et", but I am to understand that this is historically unrelated to the ampersand's actual development, which came from "Ɛt", right? – Ullallulloo Jan 18 '24 at 16:30
  • @Ullallulloo Yes, but the transition from ɛ to e is a pretty easy one to make! – Draconis Jan 18 '24 at 16:44