Slashes and Dashes

SPOILER ALERT: Following is a rant that is of no use or interest to anyone whatsoever. Consider yourself forewarned.

Regularly, I hear people on the radio or TV who provide inaccurate URL addresses, typically involving two misunderstandings of Internet language:

(1) Backslash. You hear this error frequently (much too often) in giving URLs orally, usually something like “http, colon, backslash, backslash, idiotsonparade [one word], dot  com, backslash, call” for http://idiotsonparade.com/call. Those slashes are not backslashes (\) but rather just slashes (/), an error that goes back to the old days of DOS language, which really did use backslashes. But URLs these days don’t.

(2) Dash. “idiots-on-parade” is not “idiots, dash, on, dash, parade,” but rather “idiots, hyphen, on, hyphen, parade.” A hyphen is a short line (-), the one used in URL addresses. A dash is a longer line, formed either by two hyphens (--) or by a word processing program symbol (—), neither of which is recognized in URL language.

It’s not that difficult, people. Just learn the language — slash and hyphen, not backslash and dash.