It occurs to me as I read people's entries on the Italic Competition thread, and as I work to improve my own handwriting, that one of the more interesting features of an individual's penmanship is the ampersand.
For most of my life, I've used a simple one-stroke plus sign:

It's utilitarian, but seems a bit too stark for my new italic-inspired graphology. I've tried the more traditional, but it doesn't seem to work very well for me:

Something in the movement seems wrong to my hand. Sometimes, when I'm moving quickly, it turns into a cursive capital "I" by mistake.
As my writing evolves, I'm going back to the symbol's roots in the French word "Et" and doing something like this:

Sometimes it looks good, sometimes not so much.

So how about the rest of you? Don't be shy. Show us your ands!

Mine look similar to this: 

I'm certainly no expert here... but I like the third. One of the things I enjoyed about Getty and Dubay, was the ampersands... separate that t a bit more, and its crossing, to clean it up, and I think it'll go over well. Right now it looks a bit funny... as though you're trying to cross the t with the middle of the E- a strange thing, IMO... separation should bring more clarity, although I understand it's a bit more work/time to do so...

Any and all thoughts appreciated!
-Allen

Try this ....

Is there also a French "et"? I know there is a Latin "et" that means "and" but I never took French.

I know exactly what you mean by trying the different ampersands. I've always used the first one you showed, but the other day I tried the 2nd one and it looked so horrible that I scribbled over it and then went back to the easy one. :doh:

I may give this Et version a try...

either way, I definitely need to practice!


--Stephen

Some beautiful examples with a history of the ampersand. "The symbol & is derived from the ligature of ET or et, which is the Latin word for and."

A few font examples...

Wooops- I just noticed that ligature... sorry!! Don't worry about disconnecting that t... if you can do it all together!


-Allen

[to me it was just clearer separated- but that's because I wasn't very familiar with the ligature]

There are a number of ampersand variations in the following exemplars:









James

Beautiful, James, thanks so much.

I myself like an ampersand with a tiny serif on it. (Is serif the right word?) Like a little table one rests one's hat and gloves on near the door.

Fantastic work, James!!


-Allen

Actually its roots are in the Latin of ancient Rome:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand

..

The Ampersand originated in the ligature of E and T to create a faster way to write the word "Et" meaning "And".

Obviously, a very common word. Other words were abbreviated also, and letters left out, with accents slashed above to indicate the deletion. Hence, école, rather than the more Old French/Latin escole, in French. Hôtel, rather than hostel. Forêt, rather than forest. &c. One of the reasons, I think, from my own experience with Bastarda and other styles from that period, is that the "s" requires three strokes, and is a very annoying thing to write, so often.

Please consider the above my very juvenile analysis of the wherefore of the ampersand, as I am by no means an authority. An example of one in one of my first works in an Insular Minuscule-ish hand, can be seen two examples of an "Et" ligature. I like making it. I did it last year while bored between classes, with Waterman florida blue, and an Osmiroid italic-nibbed fountain pen... It was always my dream to write this entire (or at least a lot of it) work. Can anyone tell me what it is?

But yes, I actually don't use ampersands when I'm just hand-writing things. The one taught in cursive to me in school was ridiculous, and I believe the initial function of the ampersand, i.e., saving time, has been lost.

EDIT: Actually, James' ampersands are time saving... But I think that I have trouble writing an ampersand when using just a regular, round pen nib... Very nice Wikipedia article, by the way, James! I actually didn't read it before I posted, so mine is rather superfluous. I hope to have my submission to the contest ready by tomorrow..

Does anyone else add a "c" to the end of their ampersand for "et cetera" instead of abbreviating "etc."?

Bill

What's funny, Bill, is I just typed '&c" right before you posted your post as I was editing my post for clarity... I've seen it done, and wanted to try it out. It's just short for Et... so it, grammatically and logically, should work...

I'd missed it in your post, John :doh:
So, there are two of us, at least...

Bill

Oh, I don't think you would have noticed it in my post since I added it after you posted your post, so it wasn't there yet when you were looking at mine... So you didn't miss anything!

So, -does- anyone else do this? Any grammarians want to chime in on the correctness of this &c practice?

It makes perfect sense! I'm not sure on the exact translation of "et cetera", but there is certainly an "et" in there, so "et cetera"->"& cetera"->"&c" would make perfect sense, no?

I use "&c." all the time.

et cetera means "and others" or a variation of that such as "and the others" or "and all the rest" (my four semesters of college Latin have finally become useful!)

I've done this (writing &c. instead of etc.) for a long while, since it's faster and better captures the original.

A quick search on the site shows the following:

Johnny Appleseed
Rich
and
Claes

in addition to people who have posted here.

William

I enjoy reading this forum for the fascinating things available to learn. Always suspected that the ampersand was a derivation of "et" but didn't know. Thanks to everyone for enlightening me -- and others, as well.

Thank you all for your responses, and especially James and Margana for their examples. I think I'll continue to work on my #3 example, but just change the angle a bit.

One more piece of ampersand trivia: The word itself is a ligature, shortening the phrase "and per se and". Note the second question down in this Words for the Wise column.

J. Harvey,
That's an awesome piece of writing you posted earlier. May I ask what it is?

Thanks for the compliment! It's something I was writing last year when I had nothing to do - it's from the beginning of Caesar's Commentaries - Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres...