Slash

Also called forward slash, solidus, or stroke.

How to type it

Right pinky. Introduced in Lesson 15: Bottom row: z and /.

Common uses

• A slash separates the parts of a numeric date, as in 11/8/2026, and writes simple fractions like 1/2.
• It marks alternatives in and/or and he/she.
• In a web address, slashes separate the levels of the path, as in example.com/glossary/slash.

Less common uses

• On Unix and Mac systems, / is the path separator, and a lone / is the root of the file system.
• Two slashes, //, begin a comment in C, Java, and JavaScript.
• Regular expressions are often written between a pair of slashes.