roar & hahaha
"Ampersand" is really evolved speak for "and per se
and" or rather "& per se and." Sub the English for
the Latin and you get "& by itself and." Meaning "&
by itself is the word 'and.'"
& was derived from shorthand for "et"...which of
course is Latin for the word "and."
--- aletheiak <
aletheiak@...> wrote:
> --- In BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, Michael
> Kaufman
> <mikekaufman79@y...> wrote:
> > How is an "&" upper or lower case? It just is
> what it
> > is, an ampersand.
>
> good question & both are true
>
> originally
> when the ampersand was the 27th letter of the
> alphabet
> it was only lower case
> probabably because it was considered perverse or
> something to
> begin a thought with the word and
>
> so there was never any block capital created for it
> neither in manuscript nor in type
> as there were for all 26 of the other letters
>
> here for example you see it at the very head of the
> lower case
> http://members.aol.com/alembicprs/ijdcase.htm
> where it has more or less remained thruout most of
> written
> history
>
> gradually however
> its sheer size & stature have tended to force it
> into the upper
> case
> http://members.aol.com/alembicprs/loncase.htm
>
> but only with the invention of typewriter keyboards
> not to mention computers
> has the ampersand migrated so heavily & seemingly
> irrevocably
> into the upper register
>
> in my own mind
> which prefers to think in the perfectly 3cubed
> shakespearean
> alphabet
> i had been deliberately sounding the ampersand
> correspondingly
> & therefore only in the lower register
>
> but now that i see the value of restoring it to the
> upper register
> for readers who positively want & understand it
> there
> of course i am more than glad to make that
> accommodation to
> their normalcy
>
> & this without regard to whether it is ever actually
> shouted out
> loud for being caps
> for happily that will remain at the discretion of
> the reader along
> with everything else
>
>
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