Backslash Be Gone

Peter Rukavina

A backslash looks like this: \. A slash, also known — albeit rarely — as a slant or oblique stroke or simply stroke looks like this: /.

There are no backslashes in web addresses (technical note: okay, maybe sometimes, but so effectively never as to be never).

All of the “strokes” or “slashes” in a web address are just regular old slashes, not backslashes.

So you read something like http://www.almanac.com like this: h t t p colon slash slash w w w dot almanac dot com.

In conventional everyday normal person world, the only time you’ll have cause to use the word backslash is when you’re using the MS-DOS command line, and need to refer to a directory. In MS-DOS, directory names use the backslash. So you read C:\fred as c colon backslash fred.

When you read web addresses, though, ditch the back and embrace the slash.

Side note: newspapers, especially small local ones, have an annoying habit of reproducing web addresses with backslashes. They should stop this.

Internet

Comments

Submitted by Silverbear on

Permalink

THANK you, Peter! I’m going to be emailing this post to about 100 people who (never having been in military service) DON’T seem to know what a stroke (or slash) is, and keep calling this ‘/’ a backslash!

Since you spell honor as ‘honour’, I’m assuming you’re most likely a Canadian, and may not know that the U.S. military refers to the slash as a stroke. I literally grew up in the military and learned from a very early age to call it a stroke. I learned from civilians that it was also a slash, but suddenly a few years ago, people everywhere were saying “backslash”. I began to doubt what I had always known. Thanks for the re-affirmation.

-Bear

Submitted by Pete Prodoehl on

Permalink

I’ve been meaning to write this up for quite a while, as it’s been annoying the crap out of me as well… I blame Microsoft, though I tend to do that quite often anyway…

Submitted by Derek Koch on

Permalink

a “whack” is a backslash, like C:\###
Girls just don’t get that little joke.
I was in the Infantry, so if we used a “stroke” it involved the butt-end of an M-16 and someone’s head. A good deal of pain was also involved.

Add new comment

About text formats

Plain text

  • Allowed HTML tags: <b> <i> <em> <strong> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

About This Blog

Photo of Peter RukavinaI am . I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.

To learn more about me, read my /now,  look at my bio, listen to audio I’ve posted, read presentations and speeches I’ve written, or get in touch (peter@rukavina.net is the quickest way). 

You can subscribe to an RSS feed of posts, an RSS feed of comments, or a podcast RSS feed that just contains audio posts. You can also receive a daily digests of posts by email.

Search