(no subject)

[freyakitten]

What does the word 'hyphen' mean to you? To the person I just got off the phone with, it meant the same as 'dash', 'slash' and 'backslash'. All four terms are apparently interchangeable.And she was having trouble accessing our website. Finally I resorted to explaining 'minus sign' and 'the type of slash that goes after the http: and before the www'.

Comments

What hyphen means to me:

[xenex.livejournal.com]

-

[penguin2.livejournal.com]

It means "-" (without the quotes, duh). That's what a hyphen is and all a hyphen is. In Ahh Murkia, the word "dash" is used interchangeably. And yes, it is the same character as a minus sign.

But you knew that :D

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

A minus sign is a "-" associated with a number or formula. A hyphen is a "-" between two words, or trailing a word at the end of a line. A dash is a " - " (between two spaces) presenting an aside.

If you are using a proportional font, there are different types of dash, such as emdash (a dash the width of an "m") and longdash, and possibly even a difference between the minus sign and the hyphen, All iof which disappears in fixed width fonts.

[freyaw.livejournal.com]

I swear this person thought 'hyphen' meant '/'. Or '\', since I'm not exactly sure which one she meant by 'slash' or 'backslash'.

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

One thing which annoys me is BBC's Click Online which always states "forward-slash" when quoting web addresses.

But then again the real reason they make the distinction is that Windoze users are used to using the backslash to seperate files whilst the more civilzed (Un*x) world uses the slash. Thus Windoze users are more inclined to use the backslash. Although this probably only applies to those few remaining Windoze users that know what a command line is. <grin>

[penguin2.livejournal.com]

That would be me, as a member of a dual-OS household :P