When used in titles or headers they can add some extra graphic impact without images. Why it got bumped out is anyone’s guess, but there is a good chance that some credit goes to the ABC song we are most all familiar with. The song was copyrighted in 1835, around the time that the ampersand started falling out of favor with the rest of the ABCs. The Ampersand Lives OnWhy is it still showing up, then? It must be for the deep, undying love so many have for it.Ampersands have become a bit of an obsession for some. For starters, they are one of the most unique typographical characters out there. Certain versions of the ampersand, like that in the font Caslon, clearly reveal the origin of the shape.You can see the evolution of the ampersand in the above imagery.Besides companies welcoming the ampersand into their titles, the ampersand is experiencing a bit of a resurgence in general usage.

#1 is like the original Roman ligature, 2 and 3 are from the fourth century, and 4-6 are from the ninth century. The modern ampersand has remained largely unchanged from the Carolignian ampersands developed in the ninth century.The word “ampersand” came many years later when “&” was actually part of the English alphabet. In the early 1800s, school kids reciting their ABCs concluded the alphabet with the &. It would have been confusing to say “X, Y, Z, and.” Rather, the students said, “and per se and.” “Per se” means “by itself,” so they were essentially saying, “X, Y, Z, and by itself and.” Over time, “and per se and” was slurred together into the word we use today: ampersand. Other ligatures include the ampersand, a ligature of the Latin word for and, et), the Ger-man double-s, eszett, or sharp-s, &223, which grew out of the long-s which was used in the middle of words, and the purely decorative and ligatures, holdovers from Chancery calligraphy. A typeface will also include a number of char-aThe Ampersand. Johnson & Johnson, Barnes & Noble, Dolce & Gabbana: the ampersand today is used primarily in business names, but that small character was once the 27 th part of the alphabet. This last point is useful even when a font does not have all the characters on the page.What’s that about?top typeface designers in the field, such as Matthew Carter, Sumner Stone. In fact, the rule be declared multiple times in the same style sheet. We can specify a different font for each subset of characters.We can avoid using some characters (eg Cyrillic characters or umlauts) included in specific font-family.Among its properties, we examine Unicode-range, thanks to which we can set a limited set of Unicode characters for a given font. Take advantage of the font-face directive properties to create character sets optimized for our typographic needs as well as to lighten the weight of fonts.Īs is known, it you to use custom fonts within a Web page.

Apple chancery font ampersand