Ampersands

Episode notes

Alex Schmidt is joined by writer/podcaster Kat Angus (‘I Hate It But I Love It’ podcast) and comedian/podcaster John Cullen (‘Blocked Party’ podcast) for a look at why ampersands are secretly incredibly fascinating.

Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week’s bonus episode.

LINKS FOR THE GUESTS:

• ‘I Hate It But I Love It’ podcast
• Kat Angus’s newsletter “Kat Watches Everything”
• Kat Angus on Twitter
• John Cullen’s stand-up album Long Stories For No Reason
• ‘Blocked Party’ podcast
• John Cullen on Twitter

RESOURCES USED TO INFORM THE EPISODE’S LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

• native-land.ca
• U.S. Department Of Arts And Culture
• Museum of Durham History
• Vancouver Planning — Territorial Acknowledgement

RESEARCH SOURCES:

• Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks by Keith Houston 
• Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield
• “The OEC: Facts about the language” (archived page from Oxford Dictionaries)
• & is for Ampersand (Smithsonian Archives)
• Two sources about Hollywood ampersands: a Raindance.org article about film writing credits, and a Deadline.com article about TV ampersand writing teams splitting one salary.
• What Is the Deal with Those “& Shirts,” and What Was the First One? (PopCultureTees.com)
• Why Do Fashion Brands Suddenly All Have Ampersands? (Racked.com)
• How brands get their names, explained by a professional namer (Vox)
• An article from LadBible.com called This Guy Spent Five Years Researching The Origins Of The ‘Universal S’, in case you’re curious about that “stussy” letter S.
• Why Designers Love The Ampersand (Fast Company)
• article by Kurt Kohlstedt on the 99% Invisible website, about andorsands
• Augustus & Everything After: a Shady Char­ac­ters field trip (Keith Houston)
• The Tironian et (⁊) in Galway, Ireland (a WordPress blog called “Sentence first: an Irishman’s blog about the English language)
• The History of Lorem Ipsum (Priceonomics)
• Where Did The Ampersand Symbol Come From? (Mental Floss)
• Curious Kids: Who made the alphabet song? (The Conversation)

Tracing of an ampersand from the ruins of Pompeii:

The “Tironian et”:

Some examples of italic font ampersands: