Ampersand

Okay kiddo, so you know that there are some letters in the alphabet, right? Well, one of them is called "and" and it looks like this: &. We don't say "and" when we see this symbol, but we say "ampersand".

It's kind of like a shortcut for the word "and" and we use it when we don't want to write the whole word out. For example, instead of saying "cookies and milk", we could write "cookies & milk".

People have been using the ampersand for a really long time, even back when people wrote things by hand instead of typing on a computer. Some people think it looks like a fancy "E" and that's how it got its name - "ampersand" comes from saying the letters "and per se and" which means "the symbol & by itself means and".

So there you have it, kiddo - the ampersand is a special symbol that means "and" and we use it instead of writing the whole word.