Talk:Solidus (punctuation)

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Very strange that there was only a redirect for solidus here. It redirected to the wiki article Slash.

The first paragraph of Slash said "A slash...is also called a virgule,...solidus", while later in the same article it said, "The solidus and virgule are distinct typographic symbols with decidedly different uses." This is contradictory.

Then the slash article went on to give the history of the name and development of the solidus character, and to give two paragraphs on its usage distinct from that of slash.

Since they are not the same punctuation symbol, do not have the same usage, and their names derive from distinct antecedents, and since I found when I finished creating the solidus (punctuation) article that I had twelve paragraphs, it seems obvious to me that solidus deserves its own article.


Nwbeeson 17:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Solidus in fractions

The article indicates that the solidus should also be used for level fractions like 23/50. Robert Bringhurst strongly disagrees in The Elements of Typographic Style": "The virgule, not the solidus, is used to construct level fractions."

12.196.73.233 04:27, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Compare these examples:
  • The fraction 99/70 approximates the square root of two. (slash)
  • The fraction 99⁄70 approximates the square root of two. (fraction slash)
  • The fraction 99/70 approximates the square root of two. (slash)
  • The fraction 99⁄70 approximates the square root of two. (fraction slash)
A style guide is hardly necessary to draw the obvious conclusion: Use either the first or the last form, never the middle two. Note that the fraction slash, Unicode U+02044, is covered in a number of common typefaces, and is HTML entity "⁄". (See list.) --KSmrqT 07:47, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
This falls a little afoul of No Original Research. :-) It would be good to have verifiable references for all of the page, especially for the "thou shalt" type proclamations. -- 21:46, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Solidus, slash and virgule

I've only just become aware of the English language usage of the term virgule. It appears to be an Americanism, and since the computer usage of the term slash is more widespread, it seems better to use the latter in this page.

On the other hand, possibly there's a typographical source that I don't know about. If that's the case, please quote it and revert my changes as appropriate. What I have is:

Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition, paragraph 5.122:

Related to the dash and the hyphen in form and function is the solidus, also known as the slash, slant, or virgule.

Ausinfo Style manual, fifth edition, paragraph 6.181:

A solidus--also known as a diagonal, oblique or slash...

This is hardly exhaustive, but it's the only hard evidence I've seen, and it points against the content of this page.

[edit] Shilling marks

The history section goes against everything I've ever seen about Lsd. Specifically:


Thus '2 pounds, 10 shillings, and 6 pence' would be written as '£2,10⁄6'.

A reference for this would be good. Standard British and Australian usage up to the introduction of decimal currency would have been to write this as £2/10 ⁄6, i.e. with two slashes.

The markup is doing funny things here. It seems to use the slash specially. If somebody can fix the markup and let me know what I'm doing wrong, it would help. The same breakage occurs in the example that I quote.