Slash Symbol

An election official in Arcata, California, wonders how the “/” symbol should be pronounced on ballots for the visually impaired. The symbol is becoming more and more popular as a kind of conjunction. In the U.K., they call it a stroke, or virgule, but in the United States, slash is the most common term. As University of Michigan English professor Anne Curzan has pointed out, millennials have even taken to spelling out the entire word slash in texts. This is part of a complete episode.

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