Wh@ TF? Whackyweedia contributor is droll, or has never encountered Twitter, or indeed my abbrevi8d Dad-phone texting. Hilarity is 4thcoming.
In Old English manuscripts, the Tironian "et" served as both a phonetic and morphological place holder. For instance a Tironian "et" between two words would be phonetically pronounced "ond" and would mean "and". However, if the Tironian "et" followed the letter "s", then it would be phonetically pronounced "sond" and mean water .... This additional function of a phonetic as well as a conjunction placeholder has escaped formal Modern English; for example, one may not spell the word "sand" as "s&" (although this occurs in an informal style practised on certain internet forums).