Why is the return type T& and not &T?

When we return the address of a container we usually return it as &T, then why not in this case?

@mehulbhandari358
If we take an example of string, lets say string s = “abc”; now to get its address we do &s, and not &string.
Similarly, T here is the data type. T& is the address signature of the variable of type T.