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This is the first time I've seen "&c" used instead of "etc", I had to look it up. Interesting abbreviation!
by MattRix 7y ago
This is the first time I've seen "&c" used instead of "etc", I had to look it up. Interesting abbreviation!
- Hamuko 7y agoWhy would anyone use "&c" considering that it doesn't actually save any key presses?
- blackandblue 7y agoi would! for the succinctness of it.
- rebane2001 7y agoProbαbly the sαme reαson some people use αlpha instead of 'a' in their comments
- ilikepi 7y agoHow about as a stylistic choice? There are lots of little choices like that one makes when writing that together form a person's individual writing style.
- inopinatus 7y agoNot sure what you mean - “et cetera” is nine keystrokes. Nonetheless, Tiro would approve. ⁊c.
- Symbiote 7y agoKeypresses is a pretty poor metric to base communication upon. It annoys me to see "w/" and "w/o" anywhere except Twitter. The meaning isn't clear to many non-native speakers, and it's jarring — we recognise the most common words by the shape of the whole word, so it's easier to read "with" and "without". "&" is a ligature for the letters "et". A traditional way to handwrite it, other than as &, is a "crossed epsilon", something like Ɛ̸, which looks more like "et". There's a Unicode character closer to this form: 🙲. I have no preference between 🙲, &, etc. and et cetera — none is common enough that I would recognize it by shape while reading prose.
- twsted 7y agoI think he means "& Co.", "and company".
- Finnucane 7y agoIt’s a typographic convention that goes back to the early days of printing.
- drfuchs 7y agoIt’s very old-school; check out newspapers and books printed a century or two ago.