What does amp; mean? Who invented it?

This symbol is equivalent to the Chinese word "和". It was invented by Europeans in the 18th century. The exact person is unknown. The detailed explanation is as follows:

1. About this symbol Overview:

Ampersand (Ampersand) is the representative symbol of the English word and, and can also be used as the representative symbol of "和" and "AND" in Chinese. This symbol is derived from the Latin ligature et. Can be read as ampersand, that is, "and per se and", meaning "and [the symbol which] by itself [is] and".

2. Detailed explanation of this symbol:

The earliest history of the character amp; can be traced back to the 1st century AD. It was the earliest ligature of the Latin et (meaning and). The earliest amp; was much like the combination of E and T. As printing technology developed, the symbol gradually took on its own style and separated from its original shadow. In this character, the shadow of E can still be seen, but the T has disappeared.

The diagram shows the evolution of the amp; character, with 1 more like its original ligature representation, 2 and 3 developed in the 4th century, and 4 to 6 in the 9th century. By the 18th century, amp; had evolved into a highly decorative calligraphy character. The modern amp; basically retains the appearance of amp; in the 9th century. Italic amp; is a later ligature form of E and T, also found in modern fonts. They are the product of the curved fonts of the Renaissance and look more graceful. In the round writing method with multiple "amp;", all "amp;" are written with two strokes: start from the top, go down counterclockwise, turn a big arc, go up and close the pen into a clockwise arc: in Starting from the same position, write directly to the next stroke, adding a decorative finishing touch.

Third, explain the origin of this symbol:

In the 18th century, people often used amp; followed by a lowercase c to mean etc (et cetera, both Latin , meaning etc., widely used in European languages).

The word "ampersand" was first added to the dictionary in 1837. It is the continuous pronunciation of "and, per se and". amp; included in any Roman font and used frequently in modern languages.

In contemporary times, it is more widely used, in text messages and Twitter text, & used to replace the word "And", in programming languages ????(such as MySQL, C and C, XML, SGML, and BASIC), it means "and".

This symbol is also fully used in mathematical logic.