Avoid the ampersand!

The ampersand is a convenient little typographic symbol and abbreviation, but it can surely spell trouble for a blogger or web writer.

In a title and in the web-quoted first line of a blog post or an article, an ampersand often appears with odd coding (as pictured here):

Ouch! 

This looks terrible, and it may muck up search engine findings. The simple symbol shows up as a misspelled word, instead of a character shortcut.

What’s more, on some publishing sites (like Examiner.com), the use of an ampersand can lead to publishing glitches, particularly when titles are listed as related links at the base of new articles. When a writer revises a piece, for example, the symbol is automatically replaced by the above gobbledly-gook, which stops the publishing tool in its tracks.

Avoid the ampersand, if possible.

Sure, the ampersand takes up one letter space, as opposed to the three whole spaces occupied by the full word “and.” But this little word is clearly recognized online, even robotically.

AND it’s a safer bet, all around.

Yes, sometimes an ampersand appears in a cited work’s title, a company name, or another letter-for-letter reference. If that’s the case, it’s easiest to keep that item out of the blog post or web article title and first sentence. That should keep the odd transcription out of the picture.

Here’s one more warning about the ampersand.

Within the  text of actual body copy (in a blog post, article, book, or other work), it’s technically only correct to employ the ampersand when it is part of an actual proper name or directly quoted term.

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