Category Archives: Quotes

Recently, I edited a the fourth iteration of a privately published book that I have worked with on and off for about twenty-five years. In this most recent edition, I thought the author relied too heavily on slashes where he should have been using coordinating conjunctions. So, I prepared these two learning supports on using slashes and backslashes. These texts are drawn from June Casagrande’s The Best Punctuation Book, Period, (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2014) and, from Susan Thurman’s book The Only Grammar Book You’ll Ever Need (Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2003).

Incidentally, the slash is also known as a virgule and solidus. But for our vernacular? Slash (in spite of its complicated polysemy) and backslash are the right words to describe these punctuation marks.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.