Definition:
A forward sloping line (/) used as a mark of punctuation in writing and printing.
Etymology:
From Old French, "splinter"Examples and Observations:
- "A single diagonal, the slash is not used correctly by all computers. Mechanically, it is used to denote the ends of a line in quoted poetry, or shows up in fractions, 2/3 etc.
"More importantly, the slash is a punctuation mark that sprouts in legal and commercial jargon ("and/or") and should not be used outside those linguistic ghettos."
(Rene J. Cappon, The Associated Press Guide to Punctuation. Basic Books, 2003) - "In 15 spare lines, from opening query ('Margaret, are you grieving/Over Goldengrove unleaving?') to final couplet, [Gerard Manley] Hopkins covers a vast amount of ground."
(Leah Hager Cohen, "Season of Grief." The New York Times, September 19, 2008) - "This calculator-converter provides online conversion of miles per hour to km/hour (mph to km/h) and conversion km/h to mi/h (kilometers/hour to miles/hour)."
(Calculator-Converter.com) - "'Had there been proper coordination among the intelligence agencies, then 9/11 might well have been prevented,' Mr. [Arlen] Specter said, cataloging the intelligence failures investigated by the Sept. 11 panel."
(Philip Shenon, "Senate Approves Intelligence Bill." The New York Times, December 9, 2004) - "Unqualified for Your Job? Send Your Resume C/O: McCain-Palin"
(headline, The Huffington Post, September 24, 2008) - "The mark was . . . once used as a precursor to the soft hyphen, to mark end-of-line word division. Solidus is Latin for 'shilling': in Britain, the name was extended to the mark used to separate shillings from pence in pre-decimal currency: 7/6 for seven shillings and sixpence."
(Tom McArthur, The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford Univ. Press, 1992)
Also Known As: virgule, oblique, oblique stroke, diagonal, solidus
