MANY NAMES
Oblique, stroke, solidus
A University of Sussex punctuation guide lists the slash as the oblique, the virgule, the stroke, the solidus or the shilling mark.
What is it doing?It is one of the simplest marks on the keyboard.
The slash has more names than most punctuation marks and a handful of small but useful jobs, from km/h to web addresses. Style guides also say when to leave it out. An independent informational guide.
Updated
What is it doing?THE SHORT ANSWER
Handy in numbers,
hard on the eye.
The slash earns its place in units, fractions and addresses.
In ordinary sentences, guides often prefer words.
IN NUMBERS
Per, and fractions
In scientific writing the slash stands for per, as in g/cm³, and it is used to write fractions such as 3/4.
See the numbers
IN SENTENCES
Write 'or' instead
The GOV.UK style guide says: do not use slashes instead of 'or'. The Sussex guide calls and/or style 'rather hard on the eye'.
Style tipsWHAT IS THE SLASH DOING?
Pick a job,
see the advice.
Choose one of the slash's jobs. The bar shows how hard it would be to do without the slash in that job, according to the style guides and standards below.
Based on the University of Sussex Guide to Punctuation, the GOV.UK A to Z style guide and the internet standard for web addresses.
TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING
Small mark,
busy life.
One count of the slash's jobs in English,
one of the slashes your computer knows about.
6 uses
Jobs listed for the slash
Alternatives, periods of time, 'per' in units, fractions, abbreviations such as c/o for 'care of', and separating lines of poetry written out as prose. The guide calls them all 'rather minor'.
USES · UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX
3 slashes
Distinct slash characters for text and maths
Unicode lists the ordinary SOLIDUS (also called slash or virgule), a FRACTION SLASH for composing fractions, and a DIVISION SLASH used as a division operator.
CHARACTERS · UNICODE
In the Unicode list of character names, the fraction slash carries the note 'solidus (in typography)', which is why the same word can mean slightly different marks in different settings.
USING IT WELL
Four habits from
the style guides.
These come from the University of Sussex punctuation guide and the GOV.UK style guide, which many UK organisations follow for plain English.
Swap and/or for words
Write 'his or her' rather than his/her, and 'Do this 3 or 4 times' rather than 3/4 times.
Use 'to' for ranges
GOV.UK writes date ranges with 'to', such as '10 November to 21 December', not slashes or dashes.
Keep it for units
km/h and g/cm³ are standard: the slash simply means 'per' between two units.
Keep titles clean
GOV.UK says page titles should not contain dashes or slashes; a colon can break up a longer title instead.
SLASHES ONLINE
The mark that
holds the web together.
In a web address, the double slash comes before the site's name and single slashes separate the parts of the path after it. RFC 3986, the internet standard for these addresses, lists the slash among its reserved characters for exactly this job.
That is why a slash in a file name or link can cause trouble: software reads it as a separator, not as part of the name. In ordinary writing it has no such power, which is why style guides treat it as optional.
Questions
Questions people ask
What is the proper name for a slash?
It has several. The University of Sussex guide lists the oblique, the virgule, the stroke, the solidus and the shilling mark. Unicode names the character SOLIDUS, with slash and virgule as alternative names.
Is 'and/or' wrong?
Not wrong, but often discouraged. The Sussex guide calls slashed alternatives rather hard on the eye and suggests writing them out, and GOV.UK says not to use slashes instead of 'or'.
What does the slash mean in km/h?
It means 'per'. In units of measurement, especially in scientific writing, the slash stands for the word per: kilometres per hour.
What is c/o on an envelope?
It stands for 'care of'. The Sussex guide says this is virtually the only slashed abbreviation most people meet outside specialist contexts.
Why do web addresses use slashes?
The internet standard for addresses, RFC 3986, uses a double slash before the site's name and single slashes to separate the levels of the path after it.
Sources
Where the facts come from
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