kinda weird English writing question, when would you use "&" vs. "and"?
Is it just a purely aesthetic thing or maybe a functional thing to shorten the length of a sentence/phrase?
why do I get the feeling there is some arcane English grammar rule about only using ampersands as substitution for "and" in specific circumstances lol
speaking of other weird English things, I don't actually know when it is appropriate to use semi-colons
@packetcat use semicolons whenever; the more stringent rules are actually when you can or can’t use commas, and you use semicolons in the other cases
@packetcat the biggest guilty party is the much-derided “comma splice”; if you are joining two complete clauses (both could be their own sentence), you can’t use a comma, so you have to use a semicolon
but you can also use a semicolon just because you’re already using too many commas and using another one would get confusing, or a number of other reasons
