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Comment by chris-at | Hacker News Reader

> the vast majority of people [..] believe backslashes are the way to go

Not sure you got that right. I'm certain there are more people that use forward slashed in a browser (every OS+mobile) than people who type backslashes in Windows.

My mother has used Windows for years and doesn't even know where the backslash character is. She can type URLs though.

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I've seen URLs printed on paper, posted on signs, and even printed on the side of napkin dispensers, that use backslashes instead of forward slashes. For a long time, the automated message on my university's services number (admissions, etc) started off by spelling out a URL, complete with two mentions of "backslash".

It's a very common mistake.

The phone message error is different though, they mistakenly think '/' is named backslash. I've heard people say this in person multiple times and when I've had a chance I confirmed that when they said "backslash" they were referring to the '/' character.

As a little kid (~10 years old), I thought it was called a "full colon" (made sense with semicolon, which was my favorite piece of punctuation).

You just brought back memories of some of the first radio ads I heard that mentioned URLs:

"Please visit our world wide web home page at aitch tee tee pee colon, forward slash forward slash, acme period see oh em."

I still hear "backslash" invoked in URLs once in a while, and it still bugs me to no end. It's 2016! You are a radio announcer! You should know how to pronounce URLs by now! So frustrating.

You forgot "double-you double-you double-you"!

OMG, how could I ever forget double-you double-you double-you? And the period too.

If you leave out the double-you double-you double-you period, the world wide web home page won't even work! You get like a dragon lizard or something.

Thank you for reminding me. I think.

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