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Comment by bradrn | Hacker News Reader

It’s used in English, which as far as I’m aware isn’t dead.

Opportunistically and not out of necessity, I think. As far as I know all it means is “and.”

If any word deserves a character, it’s “the.”

It’s used as a symbol in programming, I have a hard time imagining a symbol that could replace “the”. That’s not to say there isn’t one that would be suitable, I just lack the creativity or imagination to think of one.

The use in programming is also just a result of it being available. It’s a great fit for binary AND, logical AND, but there’s countless symbols that we just assign to operators because they’re available.

Prolog uses /\ and \/ for bitwise AND and OR respectively, which certainly tips a hat to one system of logic notation—of course for conjunction and disjunction between clauses it uses , (comma) and ; (semi-colon)

Perhaps, taking inspiration from Tironian shorthand, “𝈭” (a backwards version of ⁊ “et”, so to speak) would be suitable?

I believe "yͤ" is the character you desire. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_articles#Ye_form

I prefer the form with the þorn, but it's harder to enter on a phone keyboard. (In fact I don't know if there's any way at all to input that combining superscript "e" on my phone.)

There are a bunch of old handwritten abbreviations that have fallen out of use probably due to typewriter/computer limitations.

Þ is a long press on T, and Ð a long press on D, on my phone.

But ðis might be because I have Danish as well as English installed, at at least Ð is required for Faroese names.

Yes, but there are nuances, as mentioned in the article:

> In screenplays, two authors joined with & collaborated on the script, while two authors joined with and worked on the script at different times and may not have consulted each other at all.

I sometimes use it to avoid awkwardness in lists, e.g. "I ate fish & chips and drank a cup of tea".

I guess both examples use & as a stronger binder than and.

boots & cats and boots & cats

It's also occasionally used in English texts as a ligature for "et" in the Latin abbreviation of etcetera: &c.

Is that right.

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