On 7 July 2016 at 01:02, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
> On Friday,  1 July 2016 at 21:13:00 -0400, Steve Nickolas wrote:
>> On Fri, 1 Jul 2016, Norman Wilson wrote:
>>
>>> I suspect Yanks being pedantic about `slash' versus `forward slash'
>>> would give an Englishman a stroke.
>>>
>>> If that's too oblique for some of you, I can't help.
>>
>> I think the proper term is "Virgule" anyway. ;)
>
> For some definition of "proper".  But it's doubly ambiguous: it's the
> French word for comma, and OED states:
>
>    A thin sloping or upright line (/, |) occurring in mediæval MSS. as
>    a mark for the cæsura or as a punctuation-mark (frequently with the
>    same value as the modern comma).

On the other hand, the OED has the following.

slash 5. A thin sloping line, thus /

solidus 2. A sloping line used to separate shillings from pence, as 12/6,
in writing fractions, and for other separations of figures and letters; a
shilling-mark.

I would argue "solidus" is closer.

N.

>
> In modern context, it might apply equally to \\.
> Clearly that has even more capacity to confuse.
>
> Greg
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