Text 55, 50 rader
Skriven 2004-11-03 18:09:59 av Everett Hertenstein (1:116/27.0)
     Kommentar till text 31 av Ardith Hinton (1:153/716.0)
Ärende: Hello!
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Ardith Hinton wrote in a message to Everett Hertenstein:


 AH>           Ah.  Your usage has never struck me as incorrect, but now
 AH> that I know it's not completely consistent I can go on not
 AH> noticing....  :-)) 

As time goes by, I find there are more and more occasions in which  I just do
whatever come to mind at the moment.  It's definitely associated with faulty
memory.  This is somewhat disconcerting to me because I've always been able to
rely on an accurate, near photographic memory.  Quoth the raven.....


 AH>           I don't know for sure, but Fowler's MODERN ENGLISH USAGE
 AH> confirmed my guess that the ampersand was originally a stylized way
 AH> of writing "et" quickly. The word "ampersand" is evidently a
 AH> contraction of the "and _per se_ and" which was recited at the end
 AH> of the alphabet after "z" during the nineteenth century. Fowler
 AH> also notes that the ampersand is used more often in handwritten
 AH> material than in printed material... thus lending further credence
 AH> to another theory. 

To this day, I have to stop and think when trying to hand write "&".  To me, it
is an awkward "thing".  Thanks for posting a possible source for the name!  I
had no idea of the source of such a strange name as "ampersand".

 AH>  I imagine you remember learning to write with
 AH> those awful straight pens, as I do! When I was growing up there
 AH> were such things as fountain pens & ballpoint pens, but the former
 AH> were expensive & the latter unreliable... so as hapless students in
 AH> grade three we were forced to use the old dip-it-in-the-inkwell
 AH> routine.  At least the steel nibs didn't need to be sharpened
 AH> constantly.  But our Victorian ancestors probably wrote with goose
 AH> quills... in which case it's understandable that they'd prefer not
 AH> to write two letters where one and a half would do.  ;-) 

I definitely remember the steel nibs and the desk with the built in hole for an
ink well.  As I remember it, we didn't switch to pen and ink until the fifth
grade, but I think that may have been because I had 3rd and 4th grades in an
old building.  Don't really know -- that was a long time ago!

I remember trying to make pens from chicken wing feathers.  I was never able to
produce anything I would write with, but I probably wasn't trying too hard.

Incidentally, I don't know how it is in Canada, but if you want an interesting
puzzle, try finding a place you can buy a bottle of ink!

    Everett 
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 * Origin:      -=-  Nashville, Tennessee, USA  -=-  (1:116/27)