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1. Snake Girl Ellie (noelle@elekk.xyz)'s status on Monday, 08-Jul-2019 00:01:18 EDT Snake Girl Ellie

   This is bizarre but true: in older (and by that I mean largely pre-1900) English printed alphabets, the character & was printed at the end, and was memorized as a 27th character.

   It was recited in the alphabet as "per se and", meaning "'and' by itself". So the end of the alphabet went "X, Y, Z, and per se and."

   The phrase "and per se and" eventually got contracted - and is how we got today's name for the symbol: ampersand.

   No, really: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ampersand

   1. stragu (stragu@mastodon.indie.host)'s status on Monday, 08-Jul-2019 18:23:55 EDT stragu

      in reply to

      @noelle why does this kind of story make me so happy??