3 ms·

Love it! Also, "Fun fact: the well known ampersand, &, was originally a ligature for “et”, meaning “and” in Latin," completely amazed me. I never knew.

0x0 9y ago
The "et" -> "&" lineage is even more visible in certain fonts like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trebuchet_MS_ampersand.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trebuchet_MS_ampersand.sv... (linked from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand )
- amyjess 9y ago
  The bottom row of this has some more examples: http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/roman-italic-ampersands.png http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/... (found via Google Image Search for italic ampersand). The one in the second column from the left (again, bottom row) is how I write my ampersands by hand.
- Chaebixi 9y ago
  > The "et" -> "&" lineage is even more visible in certain fonts Also in some of the handwritten forms like this one: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ampersand-handwriting-2.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ampersand-handwritin... It's basically a 't' with the cross-bar curled over to form something like an 'e'. I don't have any citations, but I'm pretty sure most of this evolution pre-dated the concept of "fonts," when all documents were handwritten manuscripts.
pacaro 9y ago
The ℞ (Rx) symbol used for prescriptions started out as a ligature for Rt — an abbreviation form "receipt", the same root from which we get the modern English word "recipe".
- vilhelm_s 9y ago
  The story I heard is that it's an abbreviation for the Latin word "recipe" ("take"). Apparently it was a convention in handwritten manuscripts to use a dash to indicate abbreviations where letters have been omitted, hence a dashed R in this case.
  - pacaro 9y ago
    Interesting. I have no definitive source, my understanding came from a conversation with a typographer 10+ years ago. A little digging around suggests that receipt was in use in English (meaning list of ingredients) both in the culinary and pharmaceutical sense from the 14th century, and recipe was introduced a couple of hundred years later. Both, of course, from the same Latin root.
    - Papirola 9y ago
      in Spanish they are still the same word: "receta"
  - amyjess 9y ago
    What you're talking about is called a scribal abbreviation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribal_abbreviation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribal_abbreviation It's actually more complex than simply adding a slash to indicate you're omitting letters. Both the position of the mark and the kind of mark you make indicate exactly what letters are being omitted. It's a medieval form of shorthand, except unlike modern shorthand, it appears in all kinds of books. Back when every copy of every book had to be written by hand, it was acceptable to take shortcuts. Oh, and the really cool part is that scribal abbreviations were the banner feature of Unicode 5.1 (you can thank MUFI for putting the work into getting these into Unicode), so you can actually use them in text now!
tinyrick2 9y ago
Also, the name "ampersand" was from the phrase "and per se."

0x0 9y ago

The "et" -> "&" lineage is even more visible in certain fonts like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trebuchet_MS_ampersand.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trebuchet_MS_ampersand.sv... (linked from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand )

amyjess 9y ago
The bottom row of this has some more examples: http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/roman-italic-ampersands.png http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/... (found via Google Image Search for italic ampersand). The one in the second column from the left (again, bottom row) is how I write my ampersands by hand.
Chaebixi 9y ago
> The "et" -> "&" lineage is even more visible in certain fonts Also in some of the handwritten forms like this one: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ampersand-handwriting-2.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ampersand-handwritin... It's basically a 't' with the cross-bar curled over to form something like an 'e'. I don't have any citations, but I'm pretty sure most of this evolution pre-dated the concept of "fonts," when all documents were handwritten manuscripts.

pacaro 9y ago

The ℞ (Rx) symbol used for prescriptions started out as a ligature for Rt — an abbreviation form "receipt", the same root from which we get the modern English word "recipe".

vilhelm_s 9y ago
The story I heard is that it's an abbreviation for the Latin word "recipe" ("take"). Apparently it was a convention in handwritten manuscripts to use a dash to indicate abbreviations where letters have been omitted, hence a dashed R in this case.
- pacaro 9y ago
  Interesting. I have no definitive source, my understanding came from a conversation with a typographer 10+ years ago. A little digging around suggests that receipt was in use in English (meaning list of ingredients) both in the culinary and pharmaceutical sense from the 14th century, and recipe was introduced a couple of hundred years later. Both, of course, from the same Latin root.
  - Papirola 9y ago
    in Spanish they are still the same word: "receta"
- amyjess 9y ago
  What you're talking about is called a scribal abbreviation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribal_abbreviation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribal_abbreviation It's actually more complex than simply adding a slash to indicate you're omitting letters. Both the position of the mark and the kind of mark you make indicate exactly what letters are being omitted. It's a medieval form of shorthand, except unlike modern shorthand, it appears in all kinds of books. Back when every copy of every book had to be written by hand, it was acceptable to take shortcuts. Oh, and the really cool part is that scribal abbreviations were the banner feature of Unicode 5.1 (you can thank MUFI for putting the work into getting these into Unicode), so you can actually use them in text now!

tinyrick2 9y ago

Also, the name "ampersand" was from the phrase "and per se."