Mark E. Shoulson wrote:

> I heard on another list (or maybe this one) that "forward slash" is used
> in the BBC because "slash" is slang for "urinate," which doesn't really
> answer why nobody gets upset by the letter p also... Besides, people
> who'd been working on computers already had backslashes pounded into
> their brains because they're what DOS/Windows use for directories, and
> so need to be "reminded" that even though they're typing on a computer,
> and even though the slashes seem to act as directory delimiters, they're
> still *forward* slashes (as in UNIX), not backslashes. Still, I've seen
> URLs (sometimes even in HTML links, which makes things fail) use
> backslashes instead.

I've heard "frontslash" as the retronym for the earlier one that isn't
"backslash."
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...