Ampersand
Part of Basic ASCII: Alt 33 to 126
On Windows, hold Alt and type 38 on the numeric keypad to insert ampersand.
- Alt code
- Alt+38
- HTML entity
- &
- Unicode
- U+0026
About this symbol
The ampersand began as the letters e and t written together: et is Latin for “and”. Scribes joined the two letters so often that the pair became one sign, and a version of it already appears in Roman graffiti from the first century AD.
The name comes from the schoolroom. Children reciting the alphabet ended with “and per se and”, meaning “and, by itself, and”, and over time the phrase ran together into “ampersand”.
Unicode facts
- Official name
- AMPERSAND
- Also called
- And
- Type
- Punctuation
- Unicode block
- Basic Latin
- Unicode group
- ASCII punctuation and symbols
- Added in
- Unicode 1.1 (1993)
- Unicode notes
- Originally derived from a ligature of ‘e’ and ‘t’
Click the symbol or any value at the top of the page to copy it. See the full Basic ASCII: Alt 33 to 126 chart for related characters.