A user suggests that this Translingual entry be cleaned up, giving the reason: “The entry is too English for being Translingual, several meanings could be English instead of Translingual. Another example besides the labels: In German the conjunction for "exclusive or" is not more proscribed than the conjunction for "inclusive or". It might also be so in English, as it could be that "s/he" and (maybe: *) "wo/man" are proscribed, while "she/he" and "man/woman" are just sometimes proscribed.”
Please see the discussion on Requests for cleanup(+) or the talk page for more information and remove this template after the problem has been dealt with.
The various uses of the present symbol derive from several sources. The medieval virgule (Latinvirgula) was an oblique or vertical line that served as a comma, period, and caesura mark and is still used in literary contexts to mark line breaks in verse. (This mark separately developed as the comma ⟨,⟩ and caesura mark ⟨‖⟩ and some senses of the vertical bar ⟨|⟩.) The shilling mark (Latinsolidus) was variously written s. or as the long sſ. This eventually developed into a single unpunctuated slash; its use to separate shillings from pence was sometimes generalized to any currency division. Most mathematical senses derived from the earlier horizontal fraction bar (as in 12, usually attributed to Arabic mathematician al-Hassar), rewritten with a slash by the 18th century to permit fractions to be written on a single line. As a separator and conjunction, it represents an oblique form of the dash ⟨–⟩ or hyphen ⟨-⟩. Its use to mark supposed actions derives from command formatting in online chat forums, while its use to comment on preceding text derives from its use in some programming languages to form closing tags. Its present British name stroke derives from its use in telegraphy; its present American name slash gained wide currency from its use in computing.
2011 September 16, “Birth control pills recalled due to ‘packaging error’”, in CNN[1] (in English), archived from the original on 19 April 2021:
Customers can call 1-877-300-6153 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. CT to get their questions answered, arrange to return their pills or report problems. Information is also available at http://www.qualitestrx.com/pdf/OCRecall.pdf.
The formal abbreviation for kilometers per hour is km/h.
The exchange rate of euros in terms of dollars is expressed EUR/USD.
2012 March 9, “Green cars at 2012 Geneva motor show – in pictures”, in The Guardian[2] (in British English), →ISSN, archived from the original on 10 January 2022:
The Volkswagen Cross Coupe concept has a turbodiesel direct injection engine and two electric motors resulting in 157 mpg and emissions of 46 g/km CO2.
2024 August 19, “LAKETOWN 115-kV TRANSMISSION LINE PROJECT IN CARVER COUNTY, MN”, in Great River Energy[3] (in English), archived from the original on 5 August 2025, page 72:
Although there is no state or federal standard for transmission line EF exposures, the EQB developed a standard of a maximum EF limit of 8 kV/m at one meter (3.28 feet) above ground; the Commission has adopted this standard.
(Internetslang, originally Japanese, derived from manga iconography (漫符))Indicates blushing. Used at the end of a sentence. Usually used more than once.
The mark was originally known as the virgula or virgule in its medieval use as a form of period or comma. It is now defined by Unicode and ISO as the solidus, a late-19th-century British term for the shilling mark. (Some typographers mistaken label this mark as the virgule and distinguish the solidus as the fraction slash ⟨⁄⟩, but neither historical nor present official use supports such a distinction.) The mark is now generally known by the American term slash or forward slash, although still frequently known as a stroke in British English. For translations and less common English names, see slash.
In most uses such as to indicate date separations and line breaks, the mark is not mentioned when the text is read aloud. In some cases, it is replaced by a term, such as “even” for currency or “out of” for totals.
