Backslash and Forward Slash

[gorcorps]

Are you confused as to whether your leaning forward to drink from a water fountain or leaning backward to avoid your Mother-in-law's bad breath?

No?

Good! They why do you have any problem with the slashes?

That all depends on if the fountain or in law is on the left or your right. Do you see where it gets mixed up? Good!

 

[slayer202]

when you are writing both / or \, you start at the top, right? well at least I do, so when I write / I start from one point and go down and left, so thats backslash to me, slashing backwards

 

[Perknose]

Since we usually write left to right, convention makes \ the backslash. However, not everyone in the world reads left to right.

Uh, everyone in the world who reads English reads it left to right, which is why, in English, \ is called a backslash!

 

[Perknose]

That all depends on if the fountain or in law is on the left or your right. Do you see where it gets mixed up? Good!

 

[dank69]

when you are writing both / or \, you start at the top, right? well at least I do, so when I write / I start from one point and go down and left, so thats backslash to me, slashing backwards

When do you write '\'? You don't, except maybe if you write out a directory pathname or some computer code manually. If you handwrite anything, you might however use a '/' or 'slash.' So since we needed a name for '\' and it is a backwards '/' it was coined a backslash.

 

[Phoenix86]

Heh, up hill battle my man. Even a lot of techies get this wrong, but most everying in the thread has have it right.

\=backslash=the one that goes from top left to bottom right. Thank me later.

 

[AMCRambler]

I walk people through mapping drives frequently and while I'm standing next to them, I watch to see what they type when I say "back slash, back slash". About 50% of the time they hit the forward slash key and I have to tell them "no it's the one above the enter key".

Argh.

 

[skace]

slash is the one you can drive up (going left to right). That's the way I used to remember it...

 

[slayer202]

the slash is going back in /

you don't slash upwards and away