And…?

Happy National Ampersand Day!  I suppose this is one of the most trivial of the trivial “holidays”, but why not celebrate that little devil.  It’s used an awful lot — Loggins & Messina, eggs & bacon, and (or should I say “&”) the best one, Bill & Ted!

I looked up stuff about the ampersand (in a desperate attempt to find something interesting about it) & found out one thing that blew my mind a little.  Apparently, it used to be the last letter of the alphabet, up until the mid-1800’s!  And it wasn’t called an ampersand at the time, it was just called “and”.  It would’ve seemed kind of weird as a kid to recite the alphabet and the last thing would be “and”.  If someone wanted to mess with you, they could say “…and what?”

I’m not that confident in my ability to draw an ampersand correctly, so a lot of times if I’m handwriting something I’ll just use “+”.  Or I’ll draw a treble clef, which is more complicated but I know how to do that.

See?  It’s close enough.