Usage
The ampersand is now less common in formal writing. The main surviving use of the ampersand is in the formal names of businesses (especially firms and partnerships, particularly law firms, architectural firms, and stockbroker firms). In such names, a comma never follows the word just before the ampersand. When the ampersand forms part of a registered name (e.g. Smith & Wesson), it should not be replaced with and.
The ampersand is also often used when addressing a couple in writing: "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" or "Jane & John".
The ampersand is also used for book and movie titles, such as Harry & Tonto, and in some other proper names. In these cases, & is interchangeable with the word and; the distinction between them is mostly aesthetic. However, in film credits for story, screenplay, etc., & indicates a closer collaboration than and. The ampersand is used by the Writers Guild of America to denote when two writers collaborated on a specific script, rather than having rewritten another writer's work. In screenplays, two authors joined with & collaborated on the script, while two authors joined with and worked on the script at different times and may not have consulted each other at all. In the latter case, they both contributed enough significant material to the screenplay to receive credit but did not work together (more than likely one was hired to rewrite the previous writer's script).
In APA style, the ampersand is used when citing sources in text such as (Jones & Jones, 2005). In the list of references, an ampersand precedes the last author's name when there is more than one author. (This does not apply to MLA style, which calls for the "and" to be spelled.)
The phrase et cetera ("and so forth"), usually written as etc. can be abbreviated &c. representing the combination et + c(etera).
The ampersand can be used to indicate that the "and" in a listed item is a part of the item's name and not a separator (e.g. "Rock, pop, rhythm & blues, and hip hop").
Read more about this topic: Ampersand
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