The Ampersand

Bringhurst on the Ampersand

Quoted from page 78 of Elements of Typographic Style (version 2.5) by Robert Bringhurst.

5.1.3 In heads and titles, use the best available ampersand.

The ampersand is a symbol evolved from the Latin et, meaning and. It is one of the oldest alphabetic abbreviations, and it has assumed over the centuries a wonderful variety of forms. Contemporary offerings are for the most part uninspired, stolid pretzels: unmusical imitations of the treble clef. Often the italic font with an ampersand less repressed than it’s roman counterpart. Since the ampersand is more often used in display work than in ordinary text, the more creative versions are more useful. There is rarely any reason not to borrow the italic ampersand for use with roman text.

From the sidebar on the same page:

Earlier typographers made liberal use of ampersands, especially when setting italic — and relished in their variety of form. The 16th century French printer Christophe Plantin sometimes uses four quite different ampersands in the course of a single paragraph, even when setting something as unwhimsical as the eight-volume polylingual Bible on which he devoted more than six years of his life.

See also: The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web.

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