When a youngster misreads cooking instructions, the slash mark in the notation for the fraction 1/4 turns out to be a recipe for confusion. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Forward Slash Mishmash” We’ve talked many times about how...
Mark from Chicago, Illinois, wonders: Why do some people use the term backslash to refer to a forward slash when giving a website address? Terms for that mark in other contexts are virgule, from the Latin for “twig,” and solidus. This is part of a...
Creative communication in a noisy world! Writing a clever 140-character tweet isn’t easy. But you know what’s even more impressive? Working all 26 letters of the alphabet into just one sentence! The term for that type of sentence is pangram...
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...
No need to ask your doctor about virga. That’s just the term for “a diagonal streak of rain that evaporates before it hits the ground.” It derives from the Latin for “rod,” and is related to virgule, a fancy name for that punctuation mark otherwise...
Acnestis is the part of the back one can’t reach to scratch. It’s handy for that otherwise inaccessible patch, as in asking someone to put suntan lotion on your acnestis. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of ““Acnestis” Is the Spot on...
