> The act of joining together particular character combinations into more aesthetically pleasing forms is common and very old practice. Yep, the ampersand symb

> The act of joining together particular character combinations into more aesthetically pleasing forms is common and very old practice. Yep, the ampersand symbol "&" originated as a ligature for et, Latin for "and". You can see this more obviously in italic families and some fonts expose a more fancier variant as well. Example: http://i.imgur.com/Rsmmql9.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Rsmmql9.jpg.