It's Called a Forward Slash!

Since late '93, I've been heavily involved in the Internet. I remember when the only graphical web browser available was a little thing called Mosaic, which eventually became the core for Netscape and, later, Mozilla's Firefox. While things have certainly come a long way since those days, there are certain things that have remained largely the same.

I started working in the technical support field in early '98. I've primarily stayed there since because it's a field that I understand and it provides me with a steady paycheck and benefits while I work on establishing myself as a writer. It's a thankless job and probably one of the top ten stress-inducing positions that I know of. But as a college dropout with a good grasp of technology and the ability to troubleshoot, it's a pretty ideal niche for me. But no matter how many people I speak to, no matter how many problems I fix, there's one thing that has never failed to annoy me.

There are two 'slashes' on the keyboard. One is right above the Enter key and one is on the same key as the question mark. There seems to be a great deal of confusion over what these slashes are called. The one on the same key as the question mark (/) is the one that is almost always used when going to web pages. It is called a forward slash. Many people seem confused by that, wanting to call it a back slash. This extends to some commercials on television, which only lends further confusion to the situation.

Ordinarily, this mis-nomenclature wouldn't cause a problem. However, when troubleshooting with a customer, I invariably get to a point when I'm explaining a URL (Uniform Resource Locater, or 'web address') to a customer and I have to explain which slash I'm talking about. This causes a minute or more of confusion and explanation. This might not seem like a lot, but over the course of 60 calls, that's an hour's time. If that hour were eliminated, that would be four or more customers that I could help. That would mean shorter wait times for people calling in for customer support. It adds up.