The ampersand is often used informally to substitute the word 'and'.

Informal Writing

Avoid using the ampersand in formal writing, like academic essays or official emails.

Not for Academic Text

Commonly used in business names to imply partnership or collaboration.

In coding, ampersand has specific functions different from the word 'and'.

Used in web development to concatenate URL parameters.

In HTML, an ampersand starts character entities, a special bit of code.