Is there a grammatical reason why A&E is referred to as A&E and not AAE?

[Confuseddotcotton]

Or AaE?

Why the &?

Dunno, but M&S is the same!

I found this about it?

There are very, very few acceptable uses of & in proper written English. Here are some of them:

& is especially common when joining names to indicate a firm or a partnership, for example, a law firm:

Baker & McKenzie
Abercrombie & Fitch
Crosby Stills Nash & Young
In abbreviations, when abbreviating "and", & is often used:

AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph)
P&L (profit and loss)
R&D (research and development)
One rare usage is on envelopes addressed to a couple:

Mr. & Mrs. Jackson
&c. is a rare and somewhat archaic looking abbreviation for etc.

Other than that it is vanishingly rare to see & in formal written English, although of course in informal email, text messages, notes, and handwriting, anything goes.

Looks cooler with a special character in it. If your legis hanging off you look for the cool place rather than the grammatical correct place. A&E says we can sew your leg back on kid.., AaE says we’ll judge you on your lifestyle choices.

I may be wrong, but I'm sure I read somewhere once that the ampersand (&) used to be part of the alphabet?

In abbreviations, you don’t usually use the ‘smaller’ words like ‘and’, ‘of’ etc.

Think of examples like RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) or DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) or

So it would more logically be the AE (like the ER if you’re American).

I imagine it’s just abbreviated that way because it flows nicely when you say it! In another example, HMRC, it’s left out (Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs).

Why does it bother you?

Because ampersands are the biz!

It doesn’t bother me, no. Just wondering.. as you do about stuff.

Its easier to say A-and-E than A-a-E etc so may be why ampersand is used

I do live writing an ampersand. Almost as much fun as writing the treble clef music thingy..

But there is no " and " in Emergency Room, but there is in Accident and Emergency....

Drizzzle excellent point.

tyne, so is the pronunciation of &, ‘and’?

Perhaps I'm being a bit slow and missing something obvious but I can't think of an abbreviation like that where the 'and' is represented as an 'a'? I feel like the logical options are either AE or A&E, not AaE

Most are renamed as Emergency Department now anyway.

I do the squashed 3 with a stick out it's top and bottom if I'm handwriting.

On a computer I use &.

And at uni I was politely told off for using it in my essays, I had no idea it couldn't be used in place of the word 'and' in the middle of a regular sentence

Hmm, not sure on the small words theory- see DfT Department for Transport, TfL Transport for London and similar.

But not all abbreviations that contain the word ‘and’, use ‘&’.

I’m justifying wondering why the A&E is the absolute way of writing it, amongst the other possibilities.

tyne, so is the pronunciation of &, ‘and’?

An ampersand represents 'and' in the same way that @ represents 'at'.

The ampersand was originally a way of writing 'et', the Latin for and, so literally means and. If you Google you can see the way that 'e' and 't' written together (a ligature) became the ampersand - it's quite cool.

Because & = and, and 'a' doesn't.

As mentioned above it used to be part of the alphabet. Came at the end.

... X, Y, Z. &.

When chanted by rote in school:

"... X, Y Z and per se, and."

This morphed into 'ampersand'.

As a fully time served member of Pedants' Corner (lurker division), this should be in Pedants's Corner.

But not all abbreviations that contain the word ‘and’, use ‘&’.

What examples are you thinking of? Because I can't think of one that includes the and but not as an ampersand, but I may be missing the very obvious!

This a such a great question btw OP

Most 'A&E's renamed themselves to ED a number of years ago to try and make the point that not every accident needs to rock up.

Hmm, not sure on the small words theory- see DfT Department for Transport, TfL Transport for London and similar.

Can you think of any that include the little word and have more than two big words? I can't off the top of my head, so am wondering if that's the unwritten rule?

Gosh, you know what, I can’t think of one either, I think I assumed there was,..

Maybe this is not the issue I thought it might be..!