Small black ampersand tattoo in a lettering style on the forearm of a person wearing a grey tank top, against white bedding.

Ampersand tattoo on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close view of a person's arm resting on white bedding, with a grey sleeveless top at the left edge. A small, solid black ampersand sits on the forearm near the elbow, drawn with smooth, even linework and no shading. The photograph is soft and evenly lit, with the neutral tones keeping attention on the tattoo.

Lettering Forearm Ampersand Symbol

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You want to know why the ampersand gets its own drawer, lad. Sit down before the foreman sees you idling. Every case in the composing room at Hollis and Dunmore had forty-odd boxes of sorts, and the ampersand lived in the far corner of the lower case, nearest the window, because Mr Hollis said it was the busiest little character in English and deserved the light.

Keep reading

Nobody set it wrong. That was the trouble. In the autumn of fifty-eight, a new girl called Maureen Pask found it face-down in the galley one Thursday, its nick worn smooth, and she swore a ghost had swapped it. Every ledger that week came out reading Smith and Sons as though the firm had split in two, and the proofs went back three times before anyone would own up to it.

I was the one who checked the forme at midnight. I found it under the stone, wedged against a spacer, curled like a question mark that had given up. I held it to the lamp. The bevel was perfect, polished by a thumb rather than a rag, and I knew that thumb. It was Hollis's, and he had died in March, and we were still closing his ledgers.

I never told the family. I put it back in its box by the window, and every morning since, I've touched it first, the way you'd touch a doorframe on your way out, so it knows we're still joined. Mind the galley when you lift it. It's heavier than it looks.