What character was removed from the alphabet but is still used every day?

Johnson & Johnson, Barnes & Noble, Dolce & Gabbana: the ampersand today is used primarily in business names, but that small character was once the 27th part of the alphabet. Where did it come from though? The origin of its name is almost as bizarre as the name itself.

The shape of the character (&) predates the word ampersand by more than 1,500 years. In the first century, Roman scribes wrote in cursive, so when they wrote the Latin word et which means “and” they linked the e and t. Over time the combined letters came to signify the word “and” in English as well. Certain versions of the ampersand, like that in the font Caslon, clearly reveal the origin of the shape.

The word “ampersand” came many years later when “&” was actually part of the English alphabet. In the early 1800s, school children 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 the students 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. When a word comes about from a mistaken pronunciation, it’s called a mondegreen. Find out why here.

(The ampersand is also used in an unusual configuration where it appears as “&c” and means etc. The ampersand does double work as the e and t.)

The Decibet

Joseph Franklin.....Dan Aykroyd

[ Music Open: bouncy Muzak rendition of “The Alphabet Song” ]

Announcer: And now, Mr. Joseph Franklin of the U.S. Council of Standards and Measures.

Joseph Franklin: Thank you. Tonight I’d like to talk to you about how the new metric system of conversion will affect you. This is one in a series of public reeducation programs designed to make Americans aware of the metric conversion to take place in the next ten years. Most Americans already know that the measurement of miles will be discarded in favor of kilometers - a systme of measurement based on the unit of tens and already in use in most of the world. Few people, however, know about the new metric alphabet: the “Decibet”; “deci” from the Greek “ten”, and “bet” from our own “alphabet”. Let’s take a look, shall we? [ holds up large poster of the Decibet ] Now, isn’t that simple? Only ten letters. Twn fingers.. ten letters.

[ holds flip cards ]

Now, let’s take a look at some specifics.

[ shows Card 1 ] A, B, C, and D: our first and most popular letters will remain the same.

[ shows Card 2 ] E and F, however, will be combined and graphically simplified to make one character.

[ shows Card 3 ] The groupings GHI, and..

[ shows Card 4 ] LMNO will be condensed to single letters. Incidentally, a boon to those who always had trouble pronouncing LMNO correctly.

[ shows Card 5 ] And finally, the so-called “trash letters”, or P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z, will be condensed to this easily recognizable dark character.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten! Now, let’s take a look at how this change will affect our daily speech habits.

[ shows card ] In the EF grouping addition, the word “eagle” would remain basically the same in character, but would be pronounced “efaglef”. However, certain words previously beginning with the letter F, like..

[ shows xard ] ..”fish”, would be pronounced with an additional E sound: this, “efish”. “I caught a big efish.”

[ shows card ] “Goat” would remain “goat”.

[ shows card ] “Hotel” will carry the G letter addition, but as in many words beginning with the GH sound, such as “Ghana”, the G would remain silent; thus, “hotel”. However, words beginning wih I..

[ shows card ] .. as in “industry”, will be pronounced “gindustry”. The meaning will remain the same. LMNO’s grouping is similar.

[ shows card ] “Mucus” will be LMNOucus”.

[ shows card ] “Light” would remain “light”.

[ shows card ] And “open” would then ne “LMNOpen”, as in, “Honey, would you LMNOpen the door?” Finally, the “trash letters”, or the letters from P to Z, would then make a stop sign appear like this: [ holds up stop sign with unintelligble blotch on it ] So there you have it. We hope to eventually establish the Universal Metric Alphabet in America by 1979. Join me next time, when we explore the changes you’ll be seeing in alphabet soup and spelling bee contest rules. But now, let’s sing the old favorite, the childhood “Alphabet Song”, as we will hear it in the future..

[ singing ] “A, B, C, D, EF.. GHI.. J, K, LMNO.. [ blotch ]”

[ fade out ]

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