All the ways to write "and"
The ampersand & is the standard and symbol. It stands for the word "and" in names, titles and short notes: Q&A, R&D, salt & pepper. In formal sentences most style guides prefer the word "and", but in company names, headings, signs and social posts the & is perfectly normal.
There are other ways to say "and" with symbols. The plus sign + works in casual notes ("you + me"). The contraction 'n' turns "rock and roll" into "rock 'n' roll", with an apostrophe on both sides because letters are missing on both sides. In logic, ∧ means "and": A ∧ B is true only when both A and B are true, and in set theory the intersection ∩ plays a similar role. Programmers write && for logical and and a single & for bitwise and in C, Java and JavaScript, and Excel joins text with & (=A1&" "&B1).
The Tironian et ⁊ is another old "and" sign. It comes from the shorthand system of Tiro, the secretary of Cicero, and is still used in Irish, where it stands for agus, the Irish word for "and".
Fancy ampersands and the & in different fonts
People who search for an "and symbol font" usually want a prettier ampersand. In plain text you cannot choose the font, but Unicode has a few decorative ampersands that paste anywhere: the heavy ampersand ornament 🙴, the swash ampersand 🙵 and four "et" ligature ornaments 🙰 🙱 🙲 🙳 that still show the letters e and t the ampersand grew from. The fullwidth ＆ is a wide version made for Chinese and Japanese text, and ﹠ is a small one. The turned ampersand ⅋ is not just decoration: in linear logic it is an operator called "par".
Fancy text tools such as the cursive text generator change your letters but leave the & as it is, because Unicode has no bold, italic or script ampersand. To decorate a name or a couple's monogram, combine styled letters with a plain & or 🙵, as in the examples above. Not every phone font includes the ornament ampersands, so check how your bio looks on another device.
For logos and invitations, the font decides the shape. Italic serif fonts such as Caslon and Baskerville are famous for flowing ampersands that still reveal the original "Et".
How to type the and symbol
On most keyboards the ampersand is Shift + 7, on Windows and Mac alike. With Alt codes, hold Alt and type 38 on the number pad. On iPhone, tap 123 and the & is on the first symbols page; on Android, tap ?123.
In HTML, write a literal & as & so the browser does not mistake it for the start of a code. The ampersand symbol page explains this, along with the history of the sign. For ∧, ∩ and other operators, see math symbols.