SEPT. 8 is now WORLD AMPERSAND DAY (not just National anymore)

National Ampersand Day is now

World Ampersand Day

…because the fun & fabulous ampersand is celebrated worldwide!

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Nation­al Amper­sand Day was found­ed in 2015 by design­er & typog­ra­ph­er Chaz DeS­i­mone, cre­ator of Amper​Art​.com. Since then peo­ple from all over the world have com­ment­ed at Amper­Art that they are amper­sand fans. It’s appar­ent the amper­sand is pop­u­lar around the world: from jot­ting a short­hand “and” to brand­ing cor­po­rate names, and sim­ply being fun to scribble.

With all the world-​wide pop­u­lar­i­ty for the quirky lit­tle glyph, it is most fit­ting to change the des­ig­na­tion to World Amper­sand Day, which has been offi­cial­ly reg­is­tered with Nation­al Day Cal­en­dar.

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Why September 8?

Chaz DeS­i­mone, founder of Nation­al World Amper­sand Day & cre­ator of Amper­Art, chose this date specif­i­cal­ly because most of the char­ac­ters can be clev­er­ly dis­guised as amper­sands to des­ig­nate the date when the right fonts are select­ed, such as in this amper­gram designed sev­er­al years ago:

Chaz is a typog­ra­ph­er and graph­ic design­er, and yes, “amper­gram” is his own term. It’s sim­i­lar to a typogram, in which let­ters demon­strate the mean­ing of a word such as para||e| & SM)LE. But here the let­ters are rep­re­sent­ed by amper­sands, so he calls this image an amper­gram. Orig­i­nal­ly, he could not find suit­able amper­sands to replace the let­ters P, M & R, so asked for sug­ges­tions. Lo & behold…

Nancy’s ampersand for the ampergram!

Nancy Upper suggested the new ampersand to replace the R in the ampergram.
Sophia is a beautiful typeface & its ampersand perfectly represents the R in the uppermost fashion!

Nan­cy Upper is an amper­sand his­to­ri­an (her term is “amper­san­dol­o­gist”) & long-​time Amper­Art sub­scriber. Her keen eye and ded­i­cat­ed research tru­ly enhances the amper­gram’s R with the Sophia type­style ampersand.

Nan­cy will pub­lish a book soon, exclu­sive­ly about the amper­sand. It will be announced in a future Amper­Art newslet­ter. Learn more about Nan­cy Upper here.

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Play & have fun with the ampersand

Cel­e­brate World Amper­sand Day by get­ting creative:

Use lots & lots & lots & lots & lots & lots & lots of ampersands!

Sub­sti­tute “&” for “and” in every­thing you write.

Think of syl­la­ble replace­ments such as &roid, c&elabra, b&.
(android, can­de­labra, band)

Send friends whose names con­tain “and” a spe­cial note — &y, &rea, Alex&er, Gr&ma.
(Andy, Andrea, Alexan­der, Grandma)

Design new styles of amper­sands. (Remem­ber, & rep­re­sents the let­ters “et.”)

Use #Amper­sand­Day & #Amper­Art on social media.

Tell your friends to vis­it Amper​Art​.com & sub­scribe — it’s fun & fab­u­lous & free!

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Did You Know…

&  The amper­sand used to be the last let­ter of the alphabet?

&  The amper­sand is a lig­a­ture of “e” & “t”? That’s “et” in Latin, mean­ing “and.”

&  The word “amper­sand” is a slur­ring of “real words” run togeth­er over time?

&  The plus sign is actu­al­ly an ampersand?

Dis­cov­er more about these and oth­er amper­sand facts here.

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Have a happy & fun
World Ampersand Day!