Leadership in Action: Dividends and Interest - Language, Leadership, and the Old Tomato

Punctuation Misdirection

Here is one usage that I don't care about but probably should. This is a virgule, more commonly known as a slash: /. This is a backslash: \. I guess it is called that because the top of it leans back against the progress of the sentence. In the world of the World Wide Web, most addresses contain at least a couple of slashes. If you're typing in an address and enter a backslash where a slash should be, you'll never get to where you're trying to go. I heard an expert at a technology conference repeatedly call a slash a backslash until she was rudely corrected by someone in the audience.

I have noticed two misuses gaining steam in my own organization. Some of my co-workers have been using the word “around” when they really ...