Slash (punctuation)

A slash (/) is a punctuation mark used for various purposes.

Other names for it are a stroke, virgule, diagonal, right-leaning stroke, oblique dash, solidus, slant, slake and whack, or forward slash. A mark in the reverse direction (\) is called a reverse slash or backslash.

One use is showing how much of something is left. For example, "15/20 boxes remaining" means that there are 15 boxes remaining out of a total 20 boxes.

A slash can also mean "and". For example, "He is a writer/director" means he is both a writer and a director. It can also be interpreted as "or". For example, in the sentence "Each employee must bring his/her Photo ID", the slash (/) means "or".

It is also used in mathematics and coding, commonly to indicate numerical division. It is also used to delineate members of a hierarchical path to locate a file or resource. Note that some computer systems use the backslash for the same purpose.