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| Punctuation marks |
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apostrophe (' ) parentheses ( ( ) ), brackets ( [ ] ); ( { } ); ( < > ) colon ( : ) comma ( , ) dash ( ‒ ); ( – ); ( — ); ( ― ) ellipsis ( … ) ( ... ) exclamation mark ( ! ); ( ¡ ! ) full stop/period ( . ) hyphen ( - ); ( ‐ ) interrobang ( ‽ ) question mark ( ? ); ( ¿ ? ) quotation marks ( ‘ ’ ); ( “ ” ); ( ‚ ’ ); ( „ ” ); ( ‚ ‘ ); ( „ “ ); slash ( / ) and backslash ( \ ) space ( ) and interpunct ( · ) |
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ampersand ( & ) asterisk ( * ) and asterism ( ⁂ ) dagger ( † ‡) bullet ( •, more ) commercial at ( @ ) number sign ( # ) prime ( ′ ) and double prime (″) tilde ( ~ ) underscore ( _ ) vertical bar / pipe ( | ) |
By the eighth century AD, Western calligraphy was well developed, particularly in a form called Carolingian minuscule. The calligraphers made extensive use of the ampersand because by condensing a word into a single character, their work became a little easier. During this time the even more condensed ampersand, shown above on the left, was developed. It is often called the "roman" ampersand.
After the advent of printing in Europe in 1455, printers made extensive use of both the italic and roman ampersands. Every new typeface and font has included its own style of &. Since the ampersand's roots go back to Roman times, many languages that use a variation of the Latin alphabet make use of it.
Historically, & was regarded as the 27th letter of the English alphabet. Until recent times the alphabets used by children terminated not with ZZ is the twenty-sixth and last letter of the English alphabet. In British English, the letter is named zed reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta (see below). Other European languages use a similar form, e. French zede Spanish and Italian zeta''. but with & or related typographic symbols. George EliotMary Ann Evans known by the pen name George Eliot ( 22 November 1819 22 December 1880), was an English novelist. Born on a farm near Nuneaton in Warwickshire, she wrote about life in country towns in many of her novels. She used a male pen name, she said, refers to this when she has Jacob Storey say, "He thought it (Z) had only been put to finish off th' alphabet like; though ampusand would ha' done as well, for what he could see."