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I’m sorry if this was asked a million times before, but neither Google nor the ELU site has helped me out.

I’m wondering:

  • What’s the reason behind introducing this character?
  • What’s the difference between it and and?
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closed as general reference by Alenanno, KitFox, nohat Aug 19 '11 at 20:33

This question is too basic; it can be definitively and permanently answered by a single link to a standard internet reference source designed specifically to find that type of information.If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.

1 Answer 1

The character is called the ampersand, and this wikipedia article should be able to give you the info you want:

The ampersand can be traced back to the 1st century A.D. and the Old Roman cursive, in which the letters E and T occasionally were written together to form a ligature (figure 1).

As to what the difference is between "&" and "and", the accepted answer to a post (Courtesy: Kit) asking this question demonstrates this quite succinctly.

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