& - ampersand

Guidance on when and where to use & - ampersand

When to use & - ampersand

Never use ampersand unless it’s a company name or used in a logo image. For example:

  • H&M
  • B&Q

Spell out Westmorland and Furness in full when using it in content – don’t use W&F or Westmorland & Furness.

Ampersand isn’t always accessible to screen reader users and other disabled people. If you’re writing for the web, your visually impaired visitors may be using text-to-speech software (screen reader) that can only recognise ampersands if they’re coded in a particular way in HTML. Best to use ‘and’, which is easily understood by all screen readers.

Never use ampersands in URLs (web addresses), this includes your domain name and addresses of your webpages. Most web browsers will not be able to interpret ampersands and will probably return an error.