The (Sacred) Slashes Page:                  /

Since the wonderful world of the computer and its internet settled on us like a giant brillo pad gone amok, there have been new ways to use the slash, both forward (/) and backward (\).

The address of a web page is filled with forward slashes:

http://www.punctuationworld.com/slash

As a way to separate folders we use the back slash: 

C:\MyFiles\Unhandbook

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In the non-computer world slashes sometimes do a separating task.

there/their/they're

Or when creating fractions with a typewriter.

1/4, 3/8, 4/5

My personal favorite is when you include lines of poetry (which includes lines from a song) in a straight prose context.

Since most people know the poem "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, I'll use the first stanza as an example:

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / And sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler, long I stood / And looked down one as far as I could / To where it bent in the undergrowth;"

A useful thing to know when doing research papers in English classes.

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Extra credit: Take a paragraph from one of your writings. Put in slashes every few words and then write it out as if it were a poem using the slashes to indicate where you begin a new line. Or write it starting a new line after every slash.

 What do you think? Is this poetry?

 

Note: I apologise if you were expecting a description of what Jason does with knives.

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