5th Annual Words in Motion Program

Two studies into the ampersand (&).
And one.
And two.
“It’s not what it seems,” said the teacher, “like the posterior pituitary gland,”
“Excuse me? What?” said the student, “I really just don’t understand.”
The Teacher then sighed and patiently said, “Watch out, here’s my elegant metaphor.
The ampersand’s really an ‘and’ in disguise. In Latin ‘E T’ are the letters for
ET, which means and, which when slovenly scripted turns into a horrible squiggle;
Like the gland in line one which isn’t a gland, ampersand is a grammarly niggle.”
“Then the gland’s not a gland, &’s not an ‘and’. Is the moon ergo made of green cheese?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Teacher, “a Brie’s not the feature. Please focus instead on the ease
that the ampersand happened. Linguistically flattened, it followed the Zed at the end
of the alphabet’s singing, ‘Z and per se and’, ringing out like a name to append.
So it’s really an ‘and’. By itself (per se) bland. As much fun as a trip through Wisconsin.
But without it they say there is no other way you could link Band-Aid’s Johnson & Johnson.
Ampersand quality,
hangs on the graphical
interface artistry
of the design.
Meanwhile its meaningful
usage in scholarly
tomes at some colleges
doesn’t align.
Kevin Thornton
17