# Why \land instead of \and?

I recently asked the logical and character in TeX and got `\land` as the answer. My question is, why `\land`, and why not simple `\and`? I mean, does l here refer to something technical, or historical, or stuff like that? Or is it simply there to prevent name clash. Do we have `\and` in TeX?

• You can use backticks for inline code. – ℝaphink Jul 22 '11 at 11:57
• I'm pretty sure it's just a possible name clash thing. The `l` stands for "logic" presumably. For `\land` it might not be a problem, but `\or` is a TeX primitive (I think) so `\lor` is necessary to avoid that clash. – Seamus Jul 22 '11 at 12:02
• @Seamus: IIRC, `\and` is already taken as well. At least inside `\author`. – You Jul 22 '11 at 12:07
• @You Ah good point. I'd forgotten that. – Seamus Jul 22 '11 at 12:17

The names are the same that Knuth gave them in Plain TeX. Since `\or` and `\not` are already used for more important things, adding the prefix `l` for "logical" was almost natural, so "and" followed the convention. And LaTeX continues with it.
The symbols `\land`, `\lor` and `\lnot` have synonyms: `\wedge`, `\vee` and `\neg` as they are called, I guess, by some lattice theory specialists.
• @Caramdir: some topologists use en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_sum, which unfortunately is often denoted using `\vee`, not `\wedge`. – John Palmieri Jul 22 '11 at 18:53
• Even logicians use 'wedge' and 'vee' if they want to refer to the symbol rather than the connective it symbolises. Some systems use different symbols to represent the sane connectives (e.g. a dot for and or an ampersand). It is confusing, though, especially since there are no `\...` forms for other connectives. (In practice, `\land` and `\lor` are not as important as `\lifthen`, for example. But `\lifthen` is unfortunately non-existent.) Wouldn't say 'neg', though. – cfr Aug 9 '15 at 22:54
I think "l" stands for logical. I read `\land` as "logical and".
There's also `\lor` (which I read as "logical or") and `\lnot` (which I read as "logical not").