Slash (punctuation)
The slash "/" ( formally: solidus, also English slash ) is a character. It is used among other things as a ratio or relationship as characters and punctuation. In addition, he finds extensive application in mathematics and in many programming languages.
Typography
There is often uncertainty about whether before or after the slash is a space to set. DIN 5008 requires the slash Kompress, so without putting forward walking or trailing space, eg " school year 2014/2015 ".
In some cases it may be contrary to DIN 5008, however, be useful space before and put behind the slash, eg if the slash separates two groups of words from each other, for example, " German Bundestag / High House " or " French - German / German - French " although this by no means common understanding prevails. Often in such cases - achieved good results with typographical eighth square - distance, quarter - square distance or narrow spaces - depending on the font. Very typical are the spaces before and after the slash, if all sets are thus separated from each other, about the poem set.
The slash behaves typographically any case, unlike many other punctuation. Thus, in the early days of word processing partially practiced letters should be avoided, although after, but not to put a space before the slash. For example, not " school year 2014/2015 ," but " school year 2014/2015 " should be set. The remedy here is the non-breaking space before the slash ( when using two spaces) and the conditional (ie in the middle of line invisible ) hyphen after the slash (without using spaces ) if dynamic line is also required at the slash. In order to large differences in line lengths when Flattersatz be avoided.
Use
Slash to identify the connection
The slash can be used to " According to several (alternative) ways in the sense of connection with and, or, or, to, or the like " are used, for example: Leipzig / Halle region, the duo Becker / down, in the school the 2014/ 2015.
Slash as a division sign
The slash can be used for " a subdivision of addresses, phone numbers, application numbers, invoice numbers, dictation characters and the like ."
Slash character as a fraction
The slash can be "the specification of the relationship between numbers or quantities in the sense of connection with each / per " is used, for example: 3/4, km / h, inhabitants / km ².
Slash as punctuation
Until around 1730, the slash was instead of a comma, see Virgel.
In the 19th century in handwritten texts, such as in a letter, a combination of slash and colon used to represent brackets /: as in this example :/.
Today, the slash is used as punctuation marks only used to reproduce bound speech in continuous lines and to mark line breaks (for example, in the poem set). In this case, to use before and after the slash a space (quarter quadrangle ).
Slash as a diacritical mark
A slash as a diacritical mark used to identify a particular pronunciation of a letter, for example, in the " Ø " (Ø or Ø), " ø " ( ø or ø ) of the Danish or " Ł " ( Ł ), " ł " ( ³ ) of the Polish, Sorbian and Latin writings of the White Russian.
Slash in Dates
In some languages, such as English, Portuguese, Spanish, Hungarian and more one uses the forward slash in purely numeric dates, such as the date 1.3.1984 is written in Portuguese as 01/03/1984.
The date formats are now internationally standardized by the recommendations of ISO 8601, for Germany by the recommendations of the 2006 acquired ISO 8601. There, the slash but is not recommended as part of numerical dates, but only to separate the dates in periods after the pattern from / to.
Slash in music
The slash is often used in sheet music popular music (which does not ausnotieren the instrumental accompaniment and thus are useful for guitarists such as for pianists ) used to provide a chord with a different bass note. C / E for example, means that C major is to be played over the sound of e; for the understanding of this notation are advanced music theory knowledge is not required.
Use in mathematics and programming
The slash is used in mathematics and in many programming languages as a sign for the division.
The double slash / / is (from C99 ), Java and Pascal, among others, used in C , C like a comment that applies to the end of the line.
In the programming language ALGOL were from the slash and the backslash character for logical and / \ and logical or \ / formed.
In the Dirac equation, the Feynman slash notation is used, where the Einstein summation convention is accordingly from 0 to sum up on the 3.
Under Unix-like operating systems ( BSD, GNU / Linux, Mac OS X, etc.), the slash is used as path separator character information. He also referred to the root directory, which is the top-level directory in a system or on a disk is (example: path / home / username / Documents ).
Display of house numbers in cartography
The slash is in the most used in Germany system of mutual numbering used in cartography for generalized representation of continuous odd and even house numbers, for example, 2 /6 = 2,4,6 or 17/25 = 17,19,21, 23.25.
Slash in the IPA
In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA ) has the character "/ " the number 913, it shall specify therein the beginning or the end of a phonemic transcription.
In other languages
In English and Spanish, the slash is sometimes unofficially the abbreviation of words used (w / for with, w / o for without, c / or for con calle, s / for sin).
Representation in computer systems
In the ASCII character set, the slash is at position 47 (or 2F hexadecimal).
As a character entity reference in HTML or XML, the character can / or / be coded.
Unicode contains several variants of the slash.
Backslash
The backslash "\ " (English backslash) is rarely used as a character in general. In technical language formulations of logical or mathematical expressions he stands as a sign of the relative complement. In the data processing, it is widely used, for example as a separation character between multiple stages of a file directory structure on Windows systems, as the beginning of an escape sequence, as the first character of a LaTeX command, or as a continuation character at the end of a line. Examples:
- C: \ Documents \ right \ Vertrag.txt
- \ chapter { Introduction }