October 6, 2009
Aversion to ampersands
I have previously mentioned my rather strong feelings about ampersands. It’s not so much a phobia or hatred of the character itself (it’s actually a lovely, curvy shape, so I identify with it). It’s not that I think it’s bad to use it in company names or as part of a graphic element. It’s when people use it in prose or body copy instead of the word “and.” I had one colleague who peppered her e-mails with the character, and it just looked lazy and sloppy. It takes three keystrokes to type “and.” It takes two keystrokes, including one that requires most people to look down at the keyboard (finding the number 8), to type an ampersand. It’s just not enough time-savings to validate using a symbol instead of a word. Now, if the word “and” had 15 characters, I could probably be convinced otherwise.
I get a lot of grief about it at the office, so I was excited to wear my newest shirt.woot purchase last Friday. Ryan was so proud of my breakthrough!
