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Don't you love ampersands? & the excuse which facebook, twitter, blogging & other forms of informality have given us to use them? What once seemed affectation, brought on by an excess of William Carlos Williams & ee cummings, is now OK, because everyone does it. But we know WHY we do it. We were here first. We love its slinky shape, its vague Victoriana, its hazy hipness. We never overused it when it might have looked mannered, because it might have looked mannered. Just as we couldn't use lower case because edwin estlin cummings got there first. But we always wanted to. & now the web has freed us. But everyone else is doing it. Does that matter?