HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The slash is the oblique slanting line punctuation mark . Also known as a stroke, a solidus or several other historical or technical names including oblique and virgule. Once used to mark periods and commas, the slash is now used to represent division and fractions, exclusive 'or' and inclusive 'or', and as a date separator. A slash in the reverse direction is known as a backslash.


History

Slashes may be found in early writing as a variant form of dashes, vertical strokes, etc. The present use of a slash distinguished from such other marks derives from the
medieval Europe In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
an virgule ( la, virgula, which was used as a period, scratch comma, and caesura mark. (The first sense was eventually lost to the low dot and the other two developed separately into the comma and caesura mark ) Its use as a comma became especially widespread in
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, where it was also used to mark the continuation of a word onto the next line of a page, a sense later taken on by the
hyphen The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes ( figure ...
.. The
Fraktur Fraktur () is a calligraphic hand of the Latin alphabet and any of several blackletter typefaces derived from this hand. The blackletter lines are broken up; that is, their forms contain many angles when compared to the curves of the Antiq ...
script used throughout
Central Europe Central Europe is an area of Europe between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, based on a common historical, social and cultural identity. The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) between Catholicism and Protestantism significantly shaped the a ...
in the early modern period used a single slash as a scratch comma and a double slash as a dash. The double slash developed into the double oblique hyphen and
double hyphen In Latin script, the double hyphen is a punctuation mark that consists of two parallel hyphens. It was a development of the earlier , which developed from a Central European variant of the virgule slash, originally a form of scratch comma. S ...
or before being usually simplified into various single dashes. In the 18th century, the mark was generally known in English as the " oblique". The variant "oblique stroke" was increasingly shortened to "
stroke A stroke is a disease, medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemorr ...
", which became the common British name for the character, although printers and publishing professionals often instead referred to it as an "oblique". In the 19th and early 20th century, it was also widely known as the " shilling mark" or " solidus", from its use as the
currency sign A currency symbol or currency sign is a graphic symbol used to denote a currency unit. Usually it is defined by the monetary authority, like the national central bank for the currency concerned. In formatting, the symbol can use various format ...
for the shilling. The name "slash" is a recent development, not appearing in Webster's Dictionary until the Third Edition (1961) but has gained wide currency through its use in
computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...
, a context where it is sometimes used in British English in preference to "stroke". Clarifying terms such as "forward slash" have been coined owing to widespread use of
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...
's DOS and
Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
s, which use the backslash extensively.


Usage


Disjunction and conjunction


Connecting alternatives

The slash is commonly used in many languages as a shorter substitute for the conjunction "or", typically with the sense of exclusive or (e.g., Y/N permits yes or no but not both). Its use in this sense is somewhat informal,. although it is used in
philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as ...
to note variants (e.g., ''virgula/'') and
etymologies Etymology () The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words a ...
(e.g., Such slashes may be used to avoid taking a position in naming disputes. One example is the
Syriac naming dispute Terms for Syriac Christians are endonymic (native) and exonymic (foreign) terms, that are used as designations for ''Syriac Christians'', as adherents of Syriac Christianity. In its widest scope, Syriac Christianity encompass all Christian de ...
, which prompted the US and
Swedish census This is a list of national population and housing censuses. Census advisory The United Nations recommends a census enumeration at least once every ten years, and once every five years for even better data, rather than simply relying on esti ...
es to use the respective official designations " Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac" and " Assyrier/Syrianer" for the ethnic group. In particular, since the late 20th century, the slash is used to permit more gender-neutral language in place of the traditional masculine or
plural The plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the ...
gender neutrals. In the case of
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
, this is usually restricted to degendered pronouns such as "he/she" or "s/he". Most other
Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, D ...
include more far-reaching use of
grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...
. In these, the separate gendered desinences (grammatical suffices) of the words may be given divided by slashes or set off with parentheses. For example, in Spanish, is a son and a is a daughter; some proponents of gender-neutral language advocate the use of or when writing for a general audience or addressing a listener of unknown gender. Less commonly, the æ ligature or at sign is used instead: . Similarly, in
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
and some Scandinavian and Baltic languages, refers to any secretary and to an explicitly female secretary; some advocates of gender neutrality support forms such as for general use. This does not always work smoothly, however: problems arise in the case of words like ("doctor") where the explicitly female form is umlauted and words like ("Chinese person") where the explicitly female form loses the terminal ''-e''.


Connecting non-contrasting items

The slash is also used as a shorter substitute for the conjunction "and" or inclusive or (i.e., A or B or both), typically in situations where it fills the role of a hyphen or en dash. For example, the "Hemingway/Faulkner generation" might be used to discuss the era of the Lost Generation inclusive of the people around and affected by both Hemingway and
Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of ...
. This use is sometimes proscribed, as by '' New Hart's Rules'', the style guide for the
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...
.


Presenting routes

The slash, as a form of inclusive or, is also used to punctuate the stages of a route (e.g.,
Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four Direct-administered municipalities of China, direct-administered municipalities of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the ...
/
Nanjing Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), Postal Map Romanization, alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu Provinces of China, province of the China, People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and t ...
/ Wuhan/ Chongqing as stops on a tour of the Yangtze).


Introducing topic shifts

The word "slash" is also developing as a way to introduce topic shifts or follow-up statements. "Slash" can introduce a follow up statement, such as, "I really love that hot dog place on Liberty Street. Slash can we go there tomorrow?" It can also indicate a shift to an unrelated topic, as in "JUST SAW ALEX! Slash I just chubbed on oatmeal raisin cookies at north quad and i miss you." The new usage of "slash" appears most frequently in spoken conversation, though it can also appear in writing.


In speech

Sometimes the word "slash" is used in speech as a conjunction to represent the written role of the character (as if a written slash were being read aloud from text), e.g. "bee slash mosquito protection" for a beekeeper's net hood, and "There's a little bit of nectar slash honey over here, but really it's not a lot." (said by a beekeeper examining in a beehive), and "'' Gastornis'' slash '' Diatryma''" for two supposed genera of prehistoric birds which are now thought to be one genus.


Mathematics


Fractions

The fraction slash is used between two numbers to indicate a fraction or
ratio In mathematics, a ratio shows how many times one number contains another. For example, if there are eight oranges and six lemons in a bowl of fruit, then the ratio of oranges to lemons is eight to six (that is, 8:6, which is equivalent to the ...
. Such formatting developed as a way to write the horizontal fraction bar on a single line of text. It is first attested in
England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
and
Mexico Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...
in the 18th century.. This notation is known as an online, solidus, or shilling fraction. Nowadays fractions, unlike inline division, are often given using smaller numbers, superscript, and
subscript A subscript or superscript is a character (such as a number or letter) that is set slightly below or above the normal line of type, respectively. It is usually smaller than the rest of the text. Subscripts appear at or below the baseline, whil ...
(e.g., 2343). This notation is responsible for the current form of the percent ,
permille Per mille (from Latin , "in each thousand") is an expression that means parts per thousand. Other recognised spellings include per mil, per mill, permil, permill, or permille. The associated sign is written , which looks like a percent sig ...
, and
permyriad A basis point (often abbreviated as bp, often pronounced as "bip" or "beep") is one hundredth of 1 percentage point. The related term '' permyriad'' means one hundredth of 1 percent. Changes of interest rates are often stated in basis points. If ...
signs, developed from the horizontal form which represented an early modern corruption of an Italian abbreviation of ''per cento''. Many fonts draw the fraction slash (and the division slash) less vertical than the slash. The separate encoding is also intended to permit automatic formatting of the preceding and succeeding digits by glyph substitution with numerator and denominator glyphs (e.g., display of "1, fraction slash, 2" as "½"), though this is not yet supported in many environments or fonts. Because of this lack of support, some authors still use Unicode subscripts and superscripts to compose fractions, and many fonts design these characters for this purpose. In addition, all of the multiples less than 1 of 1n for 2 ≤ n ≤ 6 and n = 8 (e.g. 23 and 58), as well as 17, 19, and 110, are in the Unicode Number Forms or Latin-1 Supplement block as precomposed characters. This notation can also be used when the concept of fractions is extended from numbers to arbitrary rings by the method of
localization of a ring In commutative algebra and algebraic geometry, localization is a formal way to introduce the "denominators" to a given ring or module. That is, it introduces a new ring/module out of an existing ring/module ''R'', so that it consists of fractio ...
.


Division

The division slash , equivalent to the division sign , may be used between two numbers to indicate division. For example, can also be written as . This use developed from the fraction slash in the late 18th or early 19th century. The formatting was advocated by De Morgan in the mid-19th century.


Quotient of

set Set, The Set, SET or SETS may refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Mathematics *Set (mathematics), a collection of elements *Category of sets, the category whose objects and morphisms are sets and total functions, respectively Electro ...

A ''quotient of a set'' is informally a new set obtained by identifying some elements of the original set. This is denoted as a fraction S / R (sometimes even as a built fraction), where the numerator S is the original set (often equipped with some algebraic structure). What is appropriate as denominator depends on the context. In the most general case, the denominator is an equivalence relation \sim on the original set S, and elements are to be identified in the quotient S/ if they are equivalent according to \sim; this is technically achieved by making S/ the set of all equivalence classes of \sim. In
group theory In abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as groups. The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as rings, fields, and vector spaces, can all be seen ...
, the slash is used to mark quotient groups. The general form is G/N , where G is the original group and N is the normal subgroup; this is read "G mod N", where "mod" is short for "
modulo In computing, the modulo operation returns the remainder or signed remainder of a division, after one number is divided by another (called the '' modulus'' of the operation). Given two positive numbers and , modulo (often abbreviated as ) is ...
". Formally this is a special case of quotient by an equivalence relation, where g \sim h iff g = hn for some n \in N. Since many algebraic structures ( rings,
vector space In mathematics and physics, a vector space (also called a linear space) is a set whose elements, often called '' vectors'', may be added together and multiplied ("scaled") by numbers called ''scalars''. Scalars are often real numbers, but can ...
s, etc.) in particular are groups, the same style of quotients extend also to these, although the denominator may need to satisfy additional closure properties for the quotient to preserve the full algebraic structure of the original (e.g. for the quotient of a ring to be a ring, the denominator must be an
ideal Ideal may refer to: Philosophy * Ideal (ethics), values that one actively pursues as goals * Platonic ideal, a philosophical idea of trueness of form, associated with Plato Mathematics * Ideal (ring theory), special subsets of a ring considered ...
). When the original set is the set of
integer An integer is the number zero (), a positive natural number (, , , etc.) or a negative integer with a minus sign ( −1, −2, −3, etc.). The negative numbers are the additive inverses of the corresponding positive numbers. In the languag ...
s \mathbb, the denominator may alternatively be just an integer: \mathbb/n. This is an alternative notation for the set \mathbb_n of integers modulo ''n'' (needed because \mathbb_n is also notation for the very different ring of ''n''-adic integers). \mathbb/n is an abbreviation of \mathbb/n\mathbb or \mathbb/(n), which both are ways of writing the set in question as a quotient of groups.


Combining slash

Slashes may also be used as a combining character in mathematical formulae. The most important use of this is that combining a slash with a relation negates it, producing e.g. 'not equal' \neq as negation of = or 'not in' \notin as negation of \in; these slashed relation symbols are always implicitly defined in terms of the non-slashed base symbol. The graphical form of the negation slash is mostly the same as for a division slash, except in some cases where that would look odd; the negation \nmid of \mid (divides) and negation \nsim of \sim (various meanings) customarily both have their negations slashes less steep and in particular shorter than the usual one. The
Feynman slash notation In the study of Dirac fields in quantum field theory, Richard Feynman invented the convenient Feynman slash notation (less commonly known as the Dirac slash notation). If ''A'' is a covariant vector (i.e., a 1-form), : \ \stackrel\ \gamma^1 A_1 + ...
is an unrelated use of combining slashes, mostly seen in quantum field theory. This kind of combining slash takes a vector base symbol and converts it to a matrix quantity. Technically this notation is a shorthand for contracting the vector with the Dirac gamma matrices, so A\!\!\!/ = \gamma^\mu A_\mu ; what one gains is not only a more compact formula, but also not having to allocate a letter as the contracted index.


Computing

The slash, sometimes distinguished as "forward slash", is used in
computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...
in a number of ways, primarily as a separator among levels in a given hierarchy, for example in the path of a filesystem.


File paths

The slash is used as the path component separator in many
computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...
operating systems (e.g., Unix's ). In
Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...
and
Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...
systems, such as
macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
and
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
, the slash is also used for the
volume Volume is a measure of occupied three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch). ...
root directory (e.g., the initial slash in ). Confusion of the slash with the backslash largely arises from the use of the latter as the path component separator in the widely used MS-DOS and
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
systems.


Networking

The slash is used in a similar fashion in
internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...
URLs A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identi ...
(e.g., ). Often this portion of such URLs corresponds with files on a Unix
server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called clients Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers and su ...
with the same name, and this is where this convention for internet URLs comes from. The slash in an
IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...
(e.g., ) indicates the prefix size in
CIDR notation Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR ) is a method for allocating IP addresses and for IP routing. The Internet Engineering Task Force introduced CIDR in 1993 to replace the previous classful network addressing architecture on the Internet. Its g ...
. The number of addresses of a subnet may be calculated as 2address size − prefix size, in which the address size is 128 for
IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. I ...
and 32 for IPv4. For example, in IPv4, the prefix size /29 gives: 232–29 = 23 = 8 addresses.


Programming

The slash is used as a division operator in most
programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...
s while APL uses it for reduction ( fold) and compression ( filter). The double slash is used by Rexx as a
modulo operator In computing, the modulo operation returns the remainder or signed remainder of a division, after one number is divided by another (called the '' modulus'' of the operation). Given two positive numbers and , modulo (often abbreviated as ) is t ...
, and Python (starting in version 2.2) uses a double slash for division which rounds (using floor) to an integer. In Raku the double slash is used as a "defined-or" alternative to , , . A dot and slash is used in
MATLAB MATLAB (an abbreviation of "MATrix LABoratory") is a proprietary multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment developed by MathWorks. MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementat ...
and
GNU Octave GNU Octave is a high-level programming language primarily intended for scientific computing and numerical computation. Octave helps in solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically, and for performing other numerical experiments using a lan ...
to indicate an element-by-element division of matrices. Comments that begin with (a slash and an asterisk) and end with were introduced in PL/I and subsequently adopted by SAS, C, Rexx, C++,
Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...
,
JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
, PHP,
CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone technolo ...
, and C#. A double slash is also used by C99, C++, C#, PHP, Java, Swift, and JavaScript to start a single line comment. In SGML and derived languages such as
HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaS ...
and
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
, a slash is used in closing tags. For example, in HTML, begins a section of bold text and closes it. In XHTML, slashes are also necessary for "self-closing" elements such as the newline command where HTML has simply . In a style originating in the
Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...
line of operating systems ( OS/8, RT-11,
TOPS-10 TOPS-10 System (''Timesharing / Total Operating System-10'') is a discontinued operating system from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) for the PDP-10 (or DECsystem-10) mainframe computer family. Launched in 1967, TOPS-10 evolved from the earlie ...
, et cetera),
Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...
, DOS, some
CP/M CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initi ...
programs, OpenVMS, and OS/2 all use the slash to indicate command-line options. For example, the command is understood as using the command dir ("directory") with the "wide" option. Notice that no space is required between the command and the switch; this was the reason for the choice to use backslashes as the path separator since one would otherwise be unable to run a program in a different directory. Slashes are used as the standard delimiters for regular expressions, although other characters can be used instead.
IBM JCL Job Control Language (JCL) is a name for scripting languages used on IBM mainframe operating systems to instruct the system on how to run a batch job or start a subsystem. More specifically, the purpose of JCL is to say which programs to run, us ...
uses a double slash to start each line in a batch job stream except for /* and /&.


Programs

IRC and many in-game chat clients use the slash to mark commands, such as joining and leaving a chat room or sending private messages. For example, in IRC, is a command to join the channel "services" and is a command to format the following message as though it were an action instead of a spoken message. In '' Minecraft''s chat function, the slash is used for executing console and plugin commands. In ''
Second Life ''Second Life'' is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user created content within a multi player online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Fr ...
''s chat function, the slash is used to select the "communications channel", allowing users to direct commands to virtual objects "listening" on different channels. For example, if a virtual house's lights were set to use channel 42, the command "/42 on" would turn them on. In '' Discord'', Slash commands are used to send special messages and execute commands, like sending a shrug (¯\_(ツ)_/¯) or a table flip ((╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻), or changing your nickname using "/nick". Now, slash commands can also be used to use Discord bots. The Gedcom standard for exchanging computerized genealogical data uses slashes to delimit surnames. Example: Bill /Smith/ Jr. Slashes around surnames are also used in
Personal Ancestral File Personal Ancestral File (PAF), as of 2013, is a discontinued free genealogy software provided by FamilySearch, a website operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It allowed users to enter names, dates, citations and source infor ...
.


Currency

The slash (as the "shilling mark" or "solidus") was an abbreviation for the shilling, a former
coin A coin is a small, flat (usually depending on the country or value), round piece of metal or plastic used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order ...
of the United Kingdom and its former colonies. Before the decimalisation of currency in Britain, its currency abbreviations (collectively £sd) represented their
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
names, derived from a medieval French modification of the late
Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...
libra, solidus, and
denarius The denarius (, dēnāriī ) was the standard Roman silver coin from its introduction in the Second Punic War to the reign of Gordian III (AD 238–244), when it was gradually replaced by the antoninianus. It continued to be minted in very ...
.. See also
Carolingian monetary system The Carolingian monetary system, also called the Carolingian coinage systempenny less than two pounds was written During the period when
English orthography English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, ...
included the
long s The long s , also known as the medial s or initial s, is an archaic form of the lowercase letter . It replaced the single ''s'', or one or both of the letters ''s'' in a 'double ''s sequence (e.g., "ſinfulneſs" for "sinfulness" and "po� ...
, , the ſ came to be written as a single slash... The s. and the d. might therefore be omitted, and "2/6" meant "two shillings and sixpence". Amounts in full pounds, shillings and pence could be written in many different ways, for example: £1 9s 6d, £1.9.6, £1-9-6, and even £1/9/6d (with a slash used ''also'' to separate pounds and shillings). The same style was also used under the
British Raj The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was him ...
and early independent India for the predecimalization rupee/
anna Anna may refer to: People Surname and given name * Anna (name) Mononym * Anna the Prophetess, in the Gospel of Luke * Anna (wife of Artabasdos) (fl. 715–773) * Anna (daughter of Boris I) (9th–10th century) * Anna (Anisia) (fl. 1218 to 1221) ...
/
pie A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit (as in an apple pie), nuts (pecan pie), brown sugar ( sugar pie), sweete ...
system.. In five East African countries (
Kenya ) , national_anthem = " Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...
,
Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands ...
,
Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The ...
,
Somalia Somalia, , Osmanya script: 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘𐒕𐒖; ar, الصومال, aṣ-Ṣūmāl officially the Federal Republic of SomaliaThe ''Federal Republic of Somalia'' is the country's name per Article 1 of thProvisional Constitut ...
, and the ''de facto'' country of Somaliland), where the national currencies are denominated in shillings, the decimal separator is a slash mark (e.g., ). Where the minor unit is zero, an
equals sign The equals sign (British English, Unicode) or equal sign (American English), also known as the equality sign, is the mathematical symbol , which is used to indicate equality in some well-defined sense. In an equation, it is placed between tw ...
is used (e.g., 5/=).


Dates

Slashes are a common calendar date separator used across many countries and by some standards such as the
Common Log Format For computer log management, the Common Log Format, also known as the NCSA Common log format, (after NCSA HTTPd) is a standardized text file format used by web servers when generating server log files. Because the format is standardized, the fil ...
used by web servers. Depending on context, it may be in the form Day/Month/Year, Month/Day/Year, or Year/Month/Day. If only two elements are present, they typically denote a day and month in some order. For example, 9/11 is a common American way of writing the date 11 September; Britons write this as 11/9. Owing to the ambiguity across cultures, the practice of using only two elements to denote a date is sometimes proscribed.. Because of the world's many varying conventional date and time formats, ISO 8601 advocates the use of a Year-Month-Day system separated by hyphens (e.g., Victory in Europe Day occurred on 1945-05-08). In the ISO 8601 system, slashes represent date ranges: "1939/1945" represents what is more commonly written as The autumn term of a northern-hemisphere school year might be marked "2010-09-01/12-22". In English, a range marked by a slash often has a separate meaning from one marked by a dash or hyphen. "24/25 December" would mark the time shared by both days (i.e., the night from Christmas Eve to Christmas morning) rather than the time made up by both days together, which would be written "24–25 December". Similarly, a historical reference to "1066/67" might imply an event occurred during the winter of late 1066 and early 1067,. whereas a reference to 1066–67 would cover the entirety of both years. The usage was particularly common in British English during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, where such slash dates were used for night-bombing air raids. It is also used by some police forces in the United States.


Numbering

The slash is used in numbering to note totals. For example, "page 17/35" indicates that the relevant passage is on the 17th page of a 35-page document. Similarly, the marking "#333/500" on a product indicates it is the 333rd out of 500 identical products or out of a batch of 500 such products. For scores on schoolwork, in games, &c., "85/100" indicates 85 points were attained out of a possible 100. Slashes are also sometimes used to mark ranges in numbers that already include hyphens or dashes. One example is the ISO treatment of dating. Another is the
US Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sig ...
's treatment of aircraft serial numbers, which are normally written to note the fiscal year and aircraft number. For example, "85-1000" notes the thousandth aircraft ordered in fiscal year 1985. To indicate the next fifty subsequent aircraft, a slash is used in place of a hyphen or dash: "85-1001/1050".


Linguistic transcription

A pair of slashes (as " slants") are used in the transcription of speech to enclose pronunciations (i.e.,
phonetic transcription Phonetic transcription (also known as phonetic script or phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phones'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the I ...
s). For example, the
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
transcription of the English pronunciation of "solidus" is written . Properly, slashes mark broad or phonemic transcriptions, whereas narrow,
allophonic In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ' ...
transcriptions are enclosed by square brackets. For example, the word "little" may be broadly rendered as but a careful transcription of the velarization of the second L would be written . In
sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of ...
, a double or triple slash may also be used in the transcription of a traditional sociolinguistic interview or in other type of linguistic elicitation to represent simultaneous speech, interruptions, and certain types of
speech disfluencies A speech disfluency, also spelled speech dysfluency, is any of various breaks, irregularities, or non-lexical vocables which occur within the flow of otherwise fluent speech. These include "false starts", i.e. words and sentences that are cut of ...
. Single and double slashes are often used as typographic substitutes for the click letters ǀ, ǁ.


Poetry

The slash is used in various scansion notations for representing the metrical pattern of a line of verse, typically to indicate a stressed syllable.


Line breaks

The slash (as a "virgule") offset by spaces to either side is used to mark line breaks when transcribing text from a multi-line format into a single-line one.. It is particularly common in quoting
poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meani ...
, song lyrics, and
drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...
tic scripts, formats where omitting the line breaks risks losing meaningful context. For example, when quoting
Hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
's soliloquy To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them... into a prose paragraph, it is standard to mark the line breaks as "To be, or not to be, that is the Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to The slings and arrows of outrageous Or to take arms against a sea of And by opposing end them..." Less often, virgules are used in marking paragraph breaks when quoting a
prose Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the fo ...
passage. Some style guides, such as '' Hart's'', prefer to use a pipe in place of the slash to mark these line and paragraph breaks. The virgule may be thinner than a standard slash when typeset. In computing contexts, it may be necessary to use a non-breaking space before the virgule to prevent it from being widowed on the next line.


Abbreviation

The slash has become standard in several abbreviations. Generally, it is used to mark two-letter initialisms such as A/C (short for "air conditioner"), w/o ("without"), b/w ("black and white" or, less often, "between"), w/e ("whatever" or, less often, "weekend" or "week ending"), i/o ("
input/output In computing, input/output (I/O, or informally io or IO) is the communication between an information processing system, such as a computer, and the outside world, possibly a human or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals ...
"), r/w ("read/write"), and n/a ("not applicable"). Other initialisms employing the slash include w/ ("with") and w/r/t ("with regard to"). Such slashed abbreviations are somewhat more common in British English and were more common around the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
(as with "S/E" to mean "single-engined"). The abbreviation 24/7 (denoting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) describes a business that is always open or unceasing activity.. The slash in derived units such as m/s (meters per second) is not an abbreviation slash, but a straight division. It is however in that position read as 'per' rather than e.g. 'over', which can be seen as analogous to units whose symbols are pure abbreviations such as mph (miles per hour), although in abbreviations 'per' is 'p' or dropped entirely (psi, pounds per square inch) rather than a slash. In the US government, the names of offices within various departments are abbreviated using slashes, starting with the larger office and following with its subdivisions. For example, the
Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic ...
's Office of Commercial Space Transportation is formally abbreviated FAA/AST.


Proofreading

The slash or vertical bar (as a " separatrix") is used in proofreading to mark the end of margin notes or to separate margin notes from one another. The slash is also sometimes used in various proofreading initialisms, such as l/c and u/c for changes to lower and upper case, respectively.


Fiction

The slash is used in fan fiction to mark the romantic pairing a piece will focus upon (e.g., a K/S denoted a ''
Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...
'' story would focus on a sexual relationship between Kirk and Spock), a usage which developed in the 1970s from the earlier friendship pairings marked by ampersands (e.g., K&S). The genre as a whole is now known as slash fiction. Because it is more generally associated with homosexual male relationships, lesbian slash fiction is sometimes distinguished as
femslash Femslash (also known as "f/f slash", "f/f", "femmeslash", "altfic" and "sapphic") is a subgenre of slash fan fiction which focuses on romantic and/or sexual relationships between female fictional characters. Characteristics Typically, chara ...
. In situations where other pairings occur, the genres may be distinguished as m/m, f/f, &c.


Libraries

The slash is used under the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules to separate the title of a work from its statement of responsibility (i.e., the listing of its author, director, &c.). Like a line break, this slash is surrounded by a single space on either side. For example: * Gone with the Wind / by Margaret Mitchell. * Star Trek II. The Wrath of Khan ideorecording/ Paramount Pictures. The format is used in both card catalogs and online records.


Addresses

The slash is sometimes used as an abbreviation for building numbers. For example, in some contexts, 8/A Evergreen Gardens specifies Apartment 8 in Building A of the residential complex Evergreen Gardens. In the United States, however, such an address refers to the first division of Apartment 8 and is simply a variant of Apartment 8A or 8-A. Similarly in the United Kingdom, an address such as 12/2 Anywhere Road means flat (or apartment) 2 in the building numbered 12 on Anywhere Road.


Music

Slashes are used in musical notation as an alternative to writing out specific notes where it is easier to read than traditional notation or where the player can improvise. They are commonly used to indicate chords either in place of or in combination with traditional notation and for drummers as an indication to continue with the previously indicated style.


Sports

A slash is used to mark a
spare Spare or Spares may refer to: Common meanings * Spare (bowling), a term for knocking down all the pins using two bowling balls * short for spare part ** Spare tire People * Austin Osman Spare (1886–1956), English artist and occultist * Richard ...
(knocking down all ten pins in two throws) when scoring ten-pin and duckpin bowling.


Text messaging

In online messaging, a slash might be used to imitate the formatting of a chat command (e.g., writing "/fliptable" as though there were such a command) or the closing tags of languages such as HTML (e.g., writing "/endrant" to end an ironic diatribe or "/s" to mark the preceding text as sarcastic). A pair of slashes is sometimes used as a way to mark italic text, where no special formatting is available (e.g., /italics/).


As a letter

The
Iraqi language Iraqi or Iraqis (in plural) means from Iraq, a country in the Middle East, and may refer to: * Iraqi people or Iraqis, people from Iraq or of Iraqi descent * A citizen of Iraq, see demographics of Iraq * Iraqi or Araghi ( fa, عراقی), someone ...
uses the slash as a letter, representing the voiced pharyngeal fricative, as in /ameeni, "woman".


Spacing

There are usually no spaces either before or after a slash. According to '' New Hart's Rules: The Oxford Style Guide'', a slash is usually written without spacing on either side when it connects single words, letters or symbols. Exceptions are in representing the start of a new line when quoting verse, or a new paragraph when quoting prose. '' The Chicago Manual of Style'' also allows spaces when either of the separated items is a compound that itself includes a space: "Our New Zealand / Western Australia trip". (Compare use of an en dash used to separate such compounds.) ''The Canadian Style: A Guide to Writing and Editing'' prescribes, "No space before or after an oblique when used between individual words, letters or symbols; one space before and after the oblique when used between longer groups which contain internal spacing", giving the examples "n/a" and "Language and Society / ''Langue et société''". According to ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', when typesetting a URL or computer path, line breaks should occur before a slash but not in the text between two slashes..


Encoding

As a very common character, the slash (as "slant") was originally encoded in
ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...
with the decimal code 47 or 0x2F. The same value was used in
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
, which calls it "solidus" and also adds some more characters: * * * * * * * * ( fullwidth version of solidus) * In XML and HTML, the slash can also be represented with the
character entity In SGML, HTML and XML documents, the logical constructs known as ''character data'' and ''attribute values'' consist of sequences of characters, in which each character can manifest directly (representing itself), or can be represented by a series ...
  or the numeric character reference   or  .


Alternative names

}).. The 'slash' is known as a "shilling stroke".. , - , ''slant'' , , From its shape, an infrequent name except (as ''slants'') in its use to mark pronunciations off from other text and as the original
ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...
name of the character. Also ''slant line(s)'' or ''bar(s)''. , - , ''slash mark'' , , An alternative name used to distinguish the punctuation mark from the word's other senses. , - , ''slat'' , , An uncommon name for the slash used by the esoteric programming language INTERCAL. Also ''slak''.. , - , ''solidus'' , , Another name for the mark (derived from the Latin form of 'shilling'), also applied to other slashes separating numbers or letters, used in typography, and adopted by the ISO and
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
. as their formal name for the ASCII slash ("slant"). () The solidus's use as a division sign is distinguished as the division slash. , - , ''strike through'' , , The "combining short" or "long solidus overlay" is a diagonal
strikethrough Strikethrough is a typographical presentation of words with a horizontal line through their center, resulting in . Contrary to censored or sanitized (redacted) texts, the words remain readable. This presentation signifies one of two meanings. I ...
, (; ) designed to produce results like A̷B̷C̷D̷ ̷e̷f̷g̷h̷i̷ or A̸B̸C̸D̸ ̸e̸f̸g̸h̸i̸. , - , ''stroke'' , , A contraction of the phrase oblique stroke, used in
telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...
y.. It is particularly employed in reading the mark out loud: "he stroke she" is the common British reading of "he/she". "Slash" has, however, become common in Britain in computing contexts, while some North American amateur radio enthusiasts employ the British "stroke". Less frequently, "stroke" is also used to refer to hyphens. , - , ''virgule'' , , A development of ''virgula'' ("twig"),. the original medieval Latin name of the character when it was used as a period, scratch comma,. and caesura mark. Now primarily used as the name of the slash when it is used to mark line breaks in quotations. Sometimes mistakenly distinguished as a formal name for the slash, as against the solidus's supposed use as a fraction slash.. Formerly sometimes anglicized in British sources as the ''virgil''. The slash may also be read out as ''and'', ''or'', ''and/or'', ''to'', or ''cum'' in some compounds separated by a slash; ''over'' or ''out of'' in fractions, division, and numbering; and ''per'' or ''a(n)'' in derived units (as km/h) and prices (as $~/kg), where the division slash stands for "each"..


See also

*
Strikethrough Strikethrough is a typographical presentation of words with a horizontal line through their center, resulting in . Contrary to censored or sanitized (redacted) texts, the words remain readable. This presentation signifies one of two meanings. I ...
, including slashes through figures *
Feynman slash notation In the study of Dirac fields in quantum field theory, Richard Feynman invented the convenient Feynman slash notation (less commonly known as the Dirac slash notation). If ''A'' is a covariant vector (i.e., a 1-form), : \ \stackrel\ \gamma^1 A_1 + ...
in physics, which employs slash-like strikethroughs * Inequality sign, an equals sign with a slash-like strikethrough


Notes


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Slash, Punctuation Punctuation