Those are all really interesting points! The division between clauses and lists is a really great insight; I think for me, I actually have the opposite preference ("&" for clauses and "and" for lists), although in practice I don't find myself using "&" in English very much.

people read by seeing ascenders|descenders (okay that one was on purpose :-)

I actually totally missed that you had done that until you pointed it out :)

and btw always with an Oxford comma

Now we've definitely found some common ground!