U+0026 "&" Ampersand Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
&
U+0026 "&" Ampersand is a typographic symbol that represents the word "and" and has a rich history dating back to the fusion of the Latin letters "e" and "t," from the word "et" meaning "and" in Latin. In computing and digital text, it serves a crucial role as a control character in HTML, SGML, and XML, where it initiates character entities like "&" to represent itself or other special characters. Its design often features a distinctive looping shape that varies across fonts, and it remains widely used in business names, citations, programming, and informal writing as a concise connector.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+0026 |
| Version Added | 1.1 |
| Name | Ampersand |
| Block | Basic Latin |
| General Category | Other Punctuation |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Other Neutral |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | & |
| HTML Hex Encoding | & |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0x26 |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x0026 |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x00000026 |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u0026 |