4 ms·

& is not just a ligature for et. It can be used that way, as in “&c.” for “etc.”, but it has a second usage as a symbol to replace the word “and”. Replacing a w

by fwlr 4y ago

& is not just a ligature for et. It can be used that way, as in “&c.” for “etc.”, but it has a second usage as a symbol to replace the word “and”. Replacing a whole word is one of the best arguments for having a symbol, and there’s no caveat of a spectrum of meaning for “and” like there is for “certainly” & “perhaps”. (See % for percentage/pct., and $ for dollar, as other examples of words with singular meanings we want to abbreviate.) Regarding the hyphen/dash… yeah, I agree I tortured it a fair bit because I wanted to squeeze in both ! and ?. The general principle that you can separate clauses with commas or with dashes is solid. The stated purpose of the exclamation/question comma is to inject an exclamation/question mark into just a clause rather than the whole sentence, and that’s exactly what using dashes achieves.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> but it has a second usage as a symbol to replace the word “and” You know that thing where people drop latin into the middle of an English sentence? That used to be more common, because literacy and a use for writing and basic fluency in written Latin were more correlated? It’s exactly that which is why an ligature of “et” (“and” in Latin) became so common that, for quite a while, it was treated as an English letter (whose name—“and per se and”—before it got slurred into the modern form also has the same kind of Latin drop-in in the middle of it.)
- fwlr 4y ago
  I do know the origin, but if we permit any influence of descriptive linguistics at all, we have to admit that people are not substituting et for and and then rendering et as &. They are directly substituting & for and, so it’s a distinct usage imo. Yes, the historical reason they make that direct substitution is because they have read enough writing from authors making the indirect, via-Latin substitution to deduce the apparent meaning of the symbol. You can also support the claim that the direct substitution is distinct with some experimental linguistics: find someone using & and replace it with et, they will tell you that’s wrong, but replace it with and and they’ll be okay with it.

by fwlr 4y ago

dragonwriter 4y ago

> but it has a second usage as a symbol to replace the word “and” You know that thing where people drop latin into the middle of an English sentence? That used to be more common, because literacy and a use for writing and basic fluency in written Latin were more correlated? It’s exactly that which is why an ligature of “et” (“and” in Latin) became so common that, for quite a while, it was treated as an English letter (whose name—“and per se and”—before it got slurred into the modern form also has the same kind of Latin drop-in in the middle of it.)

fwlr 4y ago
I do know the origin, but if we permit any influence of descriptive linguistics at all, we have to admit that people are not substituting et for and and then rendering et as &. They are directly substituting & for and, so it’s a distinct usage imo. Yes, the historical reason they make that direct substitution is because they have read enough writing from authors making the indirect, via-Latin substitution to deduce the apparent meaning of the symbol. You can also support the claim that the direct substitution is distinct with some experimental linguistics: find someone using & and replace it with et, they will tell you that’s wrong, but replace it with and and they’ll be okay with it.