Everyone knows what they call the "and" sign, although many people don't know it has a name. An ampersand ("&") is the shorthand version of the word "and," one of the few logograms representing a common word. I mean, why not a symbol for "the"? Use of the ampersand goes as far back as the 1st century in illuminated manuscripts, which certainly saved a lot of brush strokes. Today, ampersands are the second-class citizens of the alphabet, ignored most of the time.
Big businesses like Barnes & Noble, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Black & Decker, and Ben & Jerry's, all have ampersands in common. The weird thing is, these businesses have URLs with "and" replacing their ampersands—Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) don't commonly recognize the "&" sign. A clever codehead can make it work, but the characters "?", "&", and "#" are usually reserved for special functions.
Typographers, however—yes, there is such a job—seem to love ampersands. Type designers Hoefler & Frere-Jones call the ampersand "our middle name." It's an unusual mark, and there are many creative things a designer can do with it, typographically speaking.
For a mark you never hear much about, there's a cottage industry surrounding ampersands. You can buy ampersand tableware, vision charts, and if you ever need a 17-pound cast iron ampersand, you can get one here.
Hey, Cagney & Lacey and Ben & Jerry's can't be wrong.
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